scent puzzles

Blocking and Advanced Proofing with Barriers

A student recently described how her dog found most of the hides in SDDA Excellent competition, but had a fringe alert. Did she call alert too soon or block her dog’s access to source? If she had asked her dog to check both sides of the vehicle, would he have sat and false alerted just […]

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Brittany Puppies Find the Milk | Hunter’s Heart BB x Boo litter Week 1

This Brittany puppy uses scent to find his dam’s milk at 1 week of age. At birth, healthy puppies are blind and cannot hear, for at least 10 days. A dam simply cannot make every puppy in her litter suckle at her nipples every few hours. In order to survive, each puppy must rely heavily

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What Do Sperm and Puppies Have in Common?

They both rely on scent to navigate through their environment. Sperm use chemotaxis to navigate to eggs, and newborn puppies use olfaction to navigate to the milk in their dam’s nipples, from the day their born. For animals like fish, that reproduce outside of their bodies, it’s obviously crucial to reproductive success for sperm to

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Fear, Fender Benders and Following Your Fearless Dog

My Brittany Spaniel, Boo, and I spent our summer competing in nosework on a cross country road trip: from Calgary to California, Seattle to Wisconsin. The experience was thrilling sometimes, and punctuated with scary moments. We tested our limits, and I learned to approach uncertainty more like my fearless dog. For those of you who

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