Book Review: The Canine Kingdom of Scent by Anne Lill Kvam
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Author Anne Lill Kvam packs a lot of great information into 109 easily digested pages.
After reading Canine Enrichment for the Real World last year, I identified that I should be adding more nose work or scent work into Bernie and Lizzie’s life.
We go on sniff walks all the time, but after I taught them the Shell Game, I saw how enthusiastic they both were about using their sense of smell.
While I was reading this book, I taught Bernie and Lizzie the first game or “recipe” as Kvam likes to refer to her activities.
In just three sessions, my two goobers learned to play Search for Treats on our back patio.
And they want more. When we go outside for potty breaks, they’re sniffing around all the places where treats had been hidden days before.
While I haven’t actually tried every one of Kvam’s recipes, I am confident that this book will prove to be a valuable resource for me and any other pet dog parent who wants to add variety to their dog’s daily or weekly routines.
Bernie and Lizzie give it four paws ups!
Chapters organized in sensible hierarchy
The first three chapters of this book give background information on how important their noses are to dogs, and what you can do as a dog parent to teach your dog some fun activities that will be sure to strengthen your bond with your dog.
The next nine chapters cover one scent work activity each:
Search for Treats
Hide and Seek
Naming Your Dog’s Toys
The Search Square
Finding Keys and Other Lost Items
The Lost Retrieve
Pancake Tracking
Track Training
Training Scent Discrimination
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These activities seem like they are organized from the easiest to teach your dog to the more complex. Some build upon skills from a previous exercise. For instance, once your dog knows how to track a pancake (or another food like a hot dog), then learning how to track a person’s scent seems easier.
The book ends with a page of sources and resources for anyone who would like to do further research.
What kind of training methods are used?
Everything in this book endorses positive reinforcement.
Kvam also stresses that you cannot help your dog solve the problem. Instead, you should make the exercise easier for her to learn.
“I prefer to plan the training so the dog, by herself, will choose to do what I want. It is up to you and me to make sure the pay-off for the dog is motivating enough so the likelihood that she will repeat any desired behavior increases.”
How easy are these scent work recipes to understand?
Kvam gets to the point in every chapter, so learning how to teach the scent work activity to your dog is quite accessible.
For most of the exercises, she gives a brief description, a goal statement, and then step-by-step instructions.
She makes it clear when you should be giving your dog a brain break, or stopping for the day. Like a good teacher, she encourages you to review previous steps before starting a new session with your dog.
A few of the activities also include instructions on how you can extend the fun.
For instance, with Search for Treats you’re teaching your dog how to play this nose work game in an increasingly larger space relevant to the size of your dog. But then Kvam encourages you to generalize the search in different environments. Taking the activity on the road, if you will.
Kvam also gives many pointers about stumbling blocks you may encounter, and she’s up front that her chapters on Track Training and Training Scent Discrimination are introductory learning to these more complex exercises. She encourages you to keep finding other resources and seek more training if you want to delve deeper into these aspects of scent work.
Scent work variety for every dog and handler
These nine scent work activities are diverse.
Consideration for every size dog
Kvam includes notes for dog parents who are concerned about the size of the dog performing these activities. For many activities the solution is to scale the size of the search area to the size of the dog. You want your dog to be successful.
Some activities that are not food-dependent
Most of the activities require treats as you’re teaching the activity, but only three require food once your dog has learned the activity. I love the idea of having more activities that my dogs will enjoy that don’t involve food.
Activities for indoors or outdoors
While four of these activities seem better suited for the outdoors, five of these activities can be taught and enjoyed either indoors or outdoors. When the weather doesn’t allow for walks, I’m super happy to have more games to play with Bernie and Lizzie inside.
Fun activities that strengthen your training skills
Teaching your dog these activities reinforce all the great concepts about dog training that you probably learned in obedience class. Her top priority seems to be helping dog parents learn more about their dog and strengthen that bond.
A final note…
As I was teaching Bernie and Lizzie the Search for Treats game, I did learn to read carefully… before I headed outside for this game. Rereading the instructions several times was incredibly helpful for me to internalize how I would approach training Bernie and Lizzie.
The instructions are super clear and enumerated, but there’s a lot packed into those concise sentences. I actually wrote notes about which steps I would accomplish each day. I tend to want to take more breaks, so I train in super short sessions. That just works for my schedule.
Now that I’ve finished reading this book, I’ve planned out weeks of training to incorporate most of these nose work activities.
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