Fun Nosework for Dogs: Teach Your Dog to Enjoy Using His Nose!

A book full of really fun things to do with your dog, and it's stuff everyone can do everywhere, you don't need a club or a special terrain or suit or flags or a competition-scheme or any hard-to-get material, just everyday-fun-again things that teach your dog al sorts of useful and fun things to do for you. Love it !

This has fun ideas and training tips for your dog. You don't need to be training for search and rescue work to enjoy this book. You and your dog can just have fun.

A friend of mine recommended this book to start my pup out on trailing and scent discrimination. Roy Hunter does a fantastic job explaining the process to the novice handler, as well as providing many ideas on how to keep it FUN and entertaining for the dog so that it is motivated to learn how to use it's nose. He covers basic foundation work, enjoyable learning games that can be played with your dog, and includes a few fun stories from his time as a police officer in Britain. I would (and do) strongly recommend this book for anyone wanting to start their dog on tracking, trailing or scent discrimination!

One review claims that the games in this book are for large groups. That reviewer is clearly confusing this book with Roy Hunter's other books, entitled "Fun and Games With Dogs," which do involve group dog games. However, "Fun Nosework for Dogs" does not involve multiple-dog games. This is book is about ways to get you and your dog to have fun while your dog uses its nose to sniff things out. There are no activities designed for multiple dogs. Many of the activities are a lot of fun, like "Hide the Thimble" in which you teach your dog to find items that you have hidden, using its nose. Many dogs really enjoy looking for hidden items, and this can lead to hours of enjoyable hide-and-seek for you and your dog. However, many of these games depend on prior training of your dog. A lot of them require your dog to know how to retrieve efficiently and on command; many others require your dog to be able to bark on cue. So a lot of preliminary work has to be done before you are ready to tackle many of these games, and this book does not really teach you how to train a retrieve (though it has some suggestions about teaching the bark-on-cue). Some of these games can be taught without any complicated prior training; but unless your dog retrieves and barks on cue, at least half of this book will be beyond your reach. That said, this is a great book that teaches "nosework" beyond formal tracking or police work: stuff like hide-and-seek, hunt the thimble, finding lost objects, and even a card trick where your dog finds the card last touched by a guest. In that sense, it is a very valuable addition to the literature on working with your dog's smell ability. But a lot of the stuff in here is a challenge, to say the least.

I'm surprised I'm the first to review this book. So far, it's a gem. Roy's writing is clear and direct, and the introductory games are creative and enjoyable. For me, the book is the next step after sit-down-stay. It presents the training in a format that is fun for you and your dog. The first 1/3 of the book provides a series of games that set the groundwork for scenting and scent discrimination. The next 2/3 of the book handle tracking and searching. The book is full of facts and methods, and these methods are all about bonding with your dog. As a bonus to the whole process, your dog will learn a few great parlor tricks. I am giving the book (4) stars because I don't have any other points of reference. Unleash the power of your dog.