Student Level:  Beginners. All dogs are welcome - no age restrictions, no prior formal training required. 

Course Description:   Dogs naturally use their noses to locate items of interest to them, such as food, toys or their owner.  We don’t need to teach them how to use their nose, but we do need to have a language between us to ask the dog to find something we want and for the dog to tell us where it is. This introductory workshop will show handlers how to establish their dog’s  “alert” signal and to recognize common canine body language that indicates the dog is “in scent” .  The “alert” is the behavior the dog uses to indicate to her human partner that she has found the scent source.  The alert signal is the primary building block for building field search tasks.