Or maybe my students have 6 feet, because they are always a team of a dog and a person. I used to teach family dog obedience. After many years off, I've started teaching K9 Nose Work® this year.
My Nose Work Class list is:
Beginning Introduction to Nose Work - Dogs learn to search using cartons & then other containers
Advanced Introduction to Nose Work - We get a pretty solid foundation in Interior & Exterior searches, and start Vehicle searches
Introduction to Odor - Introduces the dogs to the target odors used in the sport, and takes them on a fast trip back through carton, container, interior & exterior searches, with a little vehicle work
Continuing Nose Work - Build that same solid foundation on vehicle searches, and work more intricate searches on the other search types.
My first session started the last day of February and ended toward the end of April. My second session started the last week of April - last night was week 3 of the second session.
It's a little confusing because, to keep the day care facility happy, we've combined the 5 dogs who carried on from the first session (Advanced students) with the 4 new dogs starting the Beginning session. (THANK GOODNESS we have 2 teachers - 6 students per instructor is a max, in Nose Work.)
So, I get in early and I work exterior hides with my advanced students; then we go in and work for the hour with the new students - though I'd also pulled the advanced students out one at a time for interior hides.
We have worked on Exterior Hides for 4 nights. The first night (the last night of session one), I used about 3 cartons (I was afraid of rain) and some bushes and ornamental grass for the hides.
The second night (the first night of session two), I used more cartons, but we were on a porch with a roof... and boy, was it dark (Chloe is a black and tan coonhound... not that you see her well here):
The third night of exteriors was last week. We worked with cartons, but after the first hide, I moved the other hides out of the cartons. The cartons were still there to trigger 'search', but they figured it out anyway. This is Mauser's first out-of-carton hide, that night. It's cool how she catches the scent and works it.
Last night was something else entirely. The parking lot is torn up to be re-laid; There's a new curb, and a lot of ruts and stones. I also found a nasty nail and a very nasty (rusty) spike - but other than that, the area up to the curb was clean. So I put out five hides - the most the dogs had ever had before was two.
In these two videos of Maggie May, one of my favorite students, you can see her find each of the hides:
She did a great job on exteriors - and the other dogs rocked, too. Here's a video that shows why Maggie is one of my favorites... You don't have to watch it all (it's a pretty crummy video) - just the bit at about 1:00 minute: