I had been giving some thought to taking Callix to a “nose work” class. Since his hip dysplagia and arthritis have kept us from agility classes, and since he is allegedly one-quarter bloodhound, I thought a sniffing/find it class might be good to keep us both active and learning. As I was considering this, I came across an article in the July/August Smithsonian about how security/explosive detection dogs are trained. An abbreviated version:

The best breeds for finding bombs may be German shepherds, Belgian Malinoises, and Labrador retrievers, more for their tireless work ethic than any special olfactory prowess. Shepherds are “play reward”dogs. Labs, perpetually hungry, are “food reward” dogs. Shepherds will accept criticism; Labs won’t–the stress of not measuring up takes the starch right out of them.

Bloodhounds? They will follow a scent trail as is pulled by a string. But “they are way down on the intelligence scale” and “they stink like livestock”. Golden retrievers can outsmell everybody, but it’s tough to get them to buy into the system. “They’re so intelligent that if they don’t want to do something, they just don’t do it”.

So it looks like I have a neurotic, hungry, smelly dog. Think we have any hope?

Sent from my iPad