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Scent Work- JJ Belcher

I had the privilege to interview JJ Belcher of Sublime K9 in Tucson, Arizona. JJ’s company is doing some really cool dog training classes and activities.

One of those classes is scent work. Scent work (nose work, sniff work, scent training, etc.) is essentially training the dog to use his sense of smell to locate a specific odor amongst other odors.

It can be used to teach a dog to find a scented oil, a cell phone, money, marijuana and other drugs, or a whole variety of other odors.

In this interview you’ll hear from the expert himself on how you can train your own dog at home to learn to use his sense of smell for fun and enjoyable training.

Scent Work- The Interview

Press play below to listen to the interview:

Scent Work- What You’ll Learn

You’re going to learn tons of stuff from this interview. For example:

• What kinds of dogs can be trained for nose work (hint: it is highly possible you may have one)
• What drives or impulses a dog must possess in order to be trained to find things with his or her nose.
• The different types of odors that your dog can be trained to detect and find and why some of them may be more difficult than others.
• The benefits to the average pet dog. If you are dealing with destruction (chewing, digging, etc.), anxiety, hyperactivity or other behaviors this could be of GREAT value to you.
• Whether or not a young dog of a few months or an old dog past a decade can learn this skill.
• A step-by-step process where JJ plainly lays out how you can take a dog from not understanding how to use his nose for directed finds all the way to where a dog can find a specific odor or even track a person.
• How to troubleshoot various training challenges and make this sport and training much more challenging (and rewarding) for your dog.
• Much, much more.

This was a fun interview and one that I think is really relevant to today’s dog owners. I find that many dog owners today understand the value of training their dogs to ‘work’ yet most dog owners don’t have dogs that are capable of excelling at herding, agility, protection sports, and other dog related activities that are becoming more popular. In contrast, scent work can be taught to just about any dog, of any age, in any location, with very low cost of entry.

Enjoy the interview, we had fun with it.