Introduction to Nosework

Throughout week 1 and 2, we practiced nose touch/chin rest. You may be wondering why have we done it? Why was it important? 

The answer is in the lesson. We will use nose touch, the dog can offer on our palm, to build duration on the tin with odor!

It is not mandatory to use it, we can build duration just using the progression from the previous lesson, but for some teams this is a useful troubleshooting tool! 

Behavior:

• nose vertically on the tin, 
• tin is hold in your palm
• nose position maintained for a specific time

You will need: 

• around 40 treats per session (it is good to use some of your dog’s daily portion)
• duration on your nose touch behavior

Criteria:

• correct, precise position and maintaining this position for specified in advance time. It can be one second for a start.

Delivery of treats:

• you can use marker cue if you had used it for the nose touch alone
• deliver treats from the second hand (not the nose touch hand) 
• if you click deliver away from the source

Progression:

• nose touch no tin x3
• nose touch tin x1 
• nose touch no tin x3
• nose touch tin x1 
• end of session! When this goes well, you can start increasing the numbers of repetitions involving tin. 

This is a video of my former students Carol and Odie, doing variation of this exercise. Carol also shows a great way to deal with error – she just tossed a treat rest for another repetition.