Meatball tree
Nosework
Our dogs like to be activate and that includes physical activativity as well as mental activation.
This is an easy excersice to stimulate your dog mentaly with some nosework.
First you need:
Meatballs (or some other soft treats)
A tree
If it’s away from home you might want to bring some water.
Depending on how used your dog is to this kind of excersice you make the peaces smaller or larger.
Larger for beginners (a half meatball), and smaller for more advanced excersices (1/8 of a meatball)
Walk around the tree and press the meatballs so they stick to the bark of the tree.
Put it low, and put it higher all around the tree, about 10 peaces.(see example below)
Then get your dog and place him/her infront of the tree tell him/her to ‘find’.
For an unexperinced dog you can start by pointing at the tree so it goes up to see
the bark and then get the meatball smell in nose. The dog doesn’t have to find all
meatballs but you can end when you see that your dog isn’t working anymore or you
see that the dog loses interest in the tree.
Figur 1 The dog starts to work its way around the tree
Figur 2 Have found a meatball and now working to get it off the tree
Figur 3 Put the meatballs up high aswell
During this game you shouldn’t praise or say anything to the dog.
The dog works on it’s own using it’s nose and the reward is to find the meatballs.
If you see that their is a lot of meatballs left and the dog is still energetic
enough to continue you could trigger them by saying ‘find’ once more. So they learn
that their could be more than one treat to find.
And be aware nosework is very tiresome for the dog so don’t overdoe it in the beginning.
After nosework your dog should be given fresh water.
For those who have never done any kind of nosework and the dog doesn’t
know what the word ‘find’ means.(Of course you can pic another word )
Start indoors, take a treat an place totaly visible for the dog, and then say ‘find’
and the dog will take the treat. After you have done that 2-4 times put the treat
behind somehting like a leg of a chair,do it while the dog looks. Tell the dog
to ‘find’ after doing that 2-4 times put the treat at the same place but don’t
let the dog see while you do it, get the dog back into the room and say ‘find’.
Now you do the same but put the treat a little bit away from the first place,
for example behind another chair and now the dog needs to use it’s nose to find it.
When you see that you dog starts to use it’s nose to find the treats it has gotten
the hang of what the word ‘find’ means.
Figur 4 The meatball is out of vision for the dog