NW215 Air Flow Superpowers for the Developing Dog

Did you know that where and how you place your hides are some of the biggest predictors for well your dog will search? Did you also know that you need to be able to predict air flow to set an effective hide? Have you ever set a hide that you thought was going to be easy... but your dog struggled? This class will teach you how to harness the superpowers of air flow to help your developing dog to search at their very best!

Course Details

Did you ever wish that you had Scent Goggles? Well since they haven't yet been invented, we can strive for the next best thing!

We will learn and more importantly predict, how air will move around corners, up walls, and how it will swirl and pool... among all the other cool things that air does! And not only will your dog start to search way more effectively, but you will get way better at understanding the beautiful story that your dog is telling you about the odor's behavior.

This class is so much more than scent theory and hide placement... it's about setting hides to make your dog a stronger searching dog and to make YOU a more effective trainer and handler!

We will leverage the world around us... so get ready to get out to new places to set some thoughtful searches. Variety is essential in our sport! This class will help you to think about your search areas and will push you to get out of your predictable patterns.

Ultimately this class will help to build amazing, effective foundations for the dogs just starting in novel areas and will help more experienced, but still developing, dogs search faster with fewer missed hides or false alerts.

NW215

Teaching Approach

This class will consist of 3 to 5 lectures per week. Lectures will be a combination of scientific theory and examples of how it can be applied. The learner will need to adapt the examples to their own situation. Lectures will be a combination of short written text and videos of 2:00 or less.

This class will have a Teacher's Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook study group to help the Bronze and Silver students! Directions for joining will be in the classroom after you register.

Syllabus

Week 1:

Why is Air Flow a “Super Power”?

Basic Air Flow Forces (aka a little Scent Theory)

Evaluating Air Flow... Tools and What to Look For

Practice with Predictions

Week 2:

Using Fans to Sharpen your Eye and your Dog’s Focus

Fan Drills - Moving into Odor

Fan Drills - Intersecting Odor

Fan Drills - Containers

Week 3:

Air is Bendy!

Bendy Air - Around Corners

Bendy Air - Alcoves

Bendy Air - Vertical Surfaces

Week 4:

Bendy Air - Obstacles in the Way

Bendy Air - Vehicle Fun

Bendy Air - Narrow Spaces

Week 5:

Thermals kick up the heat on hides!

Thermal Fun - Hide in the Shade near the Sun Shade Line

Thermal Fun - Ground Hide in the Sun

Thermal Fun - Sunbeam Hide

Week 6:

Thermal Fun - Extra Hot Containers!

Thermal Fun - Hot Walls Inside and Out!

Thermal Fun - Deep in the Shade

Thermal Fun - Spotty Shade

Prerequisites & Supplies

This class is perfect for teams up through NW2/Excellent and as early as recently working novel locations. At a minimum, dogs should be working in novel areas with a reasonable amount of focus (at minimum successfully completed NW120 or equivalent). Although some of the course content can be done at home, your dog already knows and can can predict the air flow patterns in places where you search frequently. Students will benefit from seeking out new locations or to use locations where they do not often set hides. If you aren't sure whether a search area is a good one, don't worry... this class helps with that!Gold Students must be able to work in novel locations with at least moderate focus. The need to acclimate prior to searching is fine, however learning how to search in novel locations is out of scope for this class.Students will also need:- At least 12 ORT type literature mailer boxes in order to set and work some really super cool container searches.- Flagging Tape (sold on a roll on Amazon)- OPTIONAL: Wind Direction Powder (such as "Dead Down Wind") or Cirrus Wind Indicator (neither is necessary but can be helpful in evaluation of air currents)

Sample Lecture

Excerpt from Week 3....

In our previous lecture we talked about how air is "bendy". Remember that although your prevailing wind may seem straight line, once it hits a surface, the air will bend and follow the path of the surface. In the case of outside corners, air will have some turbulence which will give the dog a little more information. Dogs need to encounter odor in air flow in order to respond to it. turbulence like the circular air patterns that occur as air bends around a corner provides a perfect vehicle to bring information about a target odor to a point where it is easily available to the dog. Remember that with the type of searching that we do the dogs are "air scenting" which means that they encounter and read the air currents in order to get information about the location of source. They don't get much information directly against surfaces because odor travels in air.... it doesn't creep along a surface of an object, or anything for that matter!

This is a fairly simplistic drawing of air movement around an outside corner:

Outside Corner Air flow

In this assignment, we will seek out and experiment with setting hides using outside corners in order to learn how our dogs work odor. This setup not only teaches our dog about scent theory but it also helps us to understand odor movement based on the picture being painted by the dog.

In this setup, I encountered a perfect building to demonstrate this concept. I love these corners!!

I set a hide on the bench that you can see on the right hand side of the building. Let's take a closer look at that bench location from another view point:

It can be a little confusing to look at the pictures. The layout of the building and hide location if you looked at this building from above would look like:

Tower Footprint 2

Because of the direction of the wind, we can choose a starting point that gives us a little information about the dog's searching behavior. In this case I chose to start the dogs on the right hand side. I could have started them pointing towards the chair as an alternative and I would have gotten different information!

Tower Footprint with Starting Point

Let's see how different dogs solved this hide!

Here is Why's search:

This is the path that Why followed.

Why Outside Corner Path

Here is Darwin's search:

This is the path that Darwin followed. Pay particular attention to some notable behavior changes. Watch how when he encounters the flat surface of the wall... he does a very slight head or chin lift. He does this because the air is turbulent on the downwind side of the tower. He is using the bending air! Then at the corner, he hesitates momentarily. At that moment in time, he is deciding odor directionality and working through the information provided by the corner of the building.

Darwin Corner path

Here is Flynn's search:

This is the path that Flynn followed. Watch how Flynn came off the corners of the tower. When he was off the far corner, there was some very mild acknowledgement of novel odor (probably dog pee!) but he came off of the corners initially because of the turbulence coming around the corner. He showed that same searching pattern of circling on both corners. Interesting!!

Flynn Corner Path

For your homework I would like you to seek out corners of buildings.... see if you can predict the air flow BEFORE you run it. Where you correct?

Instructor

Stacy Barnett

Faculty

Stacy Barnett is both a sport and working dog handler. She is a top nosework competitor and trainer, and the first handler to put multiple Summit titles (16 so far) on 3 dogs (Judd SMTx3, Brava SMTx7, Powder SMTx6) in the National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW)...

Registration

Choose the plan that fits your goals and start learning at your own pace.

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