Many dog trainers are worried about how many odours they can train their dogs on, and then when trained how do you maintain it. In the world of working detection dogs it is not unusual to see dogs trained on 10-15 odours (depending on the type of work the dog is being used for) So how many odours can a dog be trained on? How acurate are they? For those of you doing nosework are you better to stick to just 3-5 odours?
The following paper is a particularly interesting one which looks at the effects of training dogs on multiple odours. They trained 4 dogs on 10 odours (I would have liked to see at least 6-12 dogs but knowing how hard this is, particularly with ethics approvals, I understand the limitations).
They found that not only did the dogs learn each odour faster than the previous, they became more acurate (this was probably due to a little more experience of the dog as the training went on). The ability to detect the previously learned odours did not decrease.
The order in which odours where trained had no impact on the dogs ability to detect them. This is interesting as you would think that the odours the dog has known the longest would have the most familiarity and therefore be most reilable with, however I think that wold really be the topic of another study looking at reliability over a longer peroid of time.
so my cpnclusion to dog trainers out there is add new odours to your training, it keeps things interesting. You dont need to stick to the nosework competition odours either, try something novel (but don't forget: don't train on scents they will encounder every day such as tea bags or lemons as you may extinct the indication if the dog smells the scent and indicates and you dont reward).
The following paper is a particularly interesting one which looks at the effects of training dogs on multiple odours. They trained 4 dogs on 10 odours (I would have liked to see at least 6-12 dogs but knowing how hard this is, particularly with ethics approvals, I understand the limitations).
They found that not only did the dogs learn each odour faster than the previous, they became more acurate (this was probably due to a little more experience of the dog as the training went on). The ability to detect the previously learned odours did not decrease.
The order in which odours where trained had no impact on the dogs ability to detect them. This is interesting as you would think that the odours the dog has known the longest would have the most familiarity and therefore be most reilable with, however I think that wold really be the topic of another study looking at reliability over a longer peroid of time.
so my cpnclusion to dog trainers out there is add new odours to your training, it keeps things interesting. You dont need to stick to the nosework competition odours either, try something novel (but don't forget: don't train on scents they will encounder every day such as tea bags or lemons as you may extinct the indication if the dog smells the scent and indicates and you dont reward).