A Nosework Easter Egg Hunt

My 16 year old step-daughter, Ashley, always spends Easter with her mom. She has two younger half-siblings and she's a big help in setting up the annual egg hunt at her grandpa's.  This week I found myself feeling a little disappointed about Easter without her.  I hadn't decorated and other than having an Easter dinner with my husband and mother-in-law, we didn't have anything else planned.  And yet I had pulled the plastic Easter eggs and a couple baskets out of the garage. 

I lamented to my friend Ellie, who is our school librarian, at work on Thursday.  She suggested the perfect solution: a nosework egg hunt!  "What a great idea, I'll host!"  I said.  The plans for an Easter-themed evening of nosework quickly came together.  We chose Friday night to avoid conflicts with Easter activities and because it was supposed to be the best weather day according to the forecast. 

Friday evening came on cool and blue.  I brought my nosework kit out onto the back deck and began setting up two different scents: birch and anise.  I prepared eight different finds.  Six of them I placed inside plastic eggs with holes in the end.  It had been a month since I had last practiced nosework with Pongo.  Life has been so busy lately that nosework has fallen by the wayside.  A friend of mine used to say "life interrupts" when he found mundane everyday living got in the way of fullfilling life's dreams.  I find myself often quoting him, as this phenomenon seems to happen often to me. 

The seventh find I planned as a threshhold find. Threshhold finds are located near the starting point, marked by two cones in nosework trials.  Dogs are often so excited that when they are given the command to "search" they forget to detail the area near the starting point. In class, we were told to always practice working the threshhold.  I placed two Q-tips inside a plastic golf-tee shaped container that I pushed into the ground.  The eighth find was a high hide with a Q-tip clipped to the fence.  The pictures here show the steps I used to prepare for the hide.  Tweezers are used to take the scented Q-tips out of the jar without contaminating it with your own scent.  I put two, sometimes three in the metal containers.  Next, I placed the metal containers inside the smaller plastic eggs. 

Here you can see my Easter egg basket.  I needed one larger egg for a round metal tin I loaded with anise Q-tips.  It is larger than the rectangular tins with the sliding-lids.

Ellie arrived first with Lincoln and Daisy (left to right).  Here they waited nicely for their turn to work.  It was a beautiful evening and at 7 pm the light was just beginning to fade in the sky.  We decided to get started as we knew Mary and Crosby were running late.  Pongo went first. He blew past the one on the threshhold (all the dogs had difficulty finding that one).  Pongo and I have done very little searching in our own backyard on grass.  Most of our grass practice has been at a park.  It took him a while to get going.  He found one egg between a stack of wood and a Ford truck tailgate and kept showing it to me over and over again.  I learned in nosework class that I can reward him a second time, but then get him to move on.  He seemed unsure what to do next, but I didn't want to lead him.   After a few minutes, I decided to give him a break and I put him in the house while Ellie worked both Lincoln and Daisy.

My husband and I have a large rectangular yard that's long and skinny.  There were many easy places to hide the eggs with piles of wood, lawn furniture and statues, rosebushes, enormous rhubarb plants, stumps and garden boxes. 


 

A blue egg loaded with birch odor. 

Lincoln alerts to the high hide. 

It was fun to watch Lincoln and Daisy work. Daisy especially shows a lot of exuberance for nosework. I feel so lucky to have friends who enjoy doing nosework with their dogs. I learn from them each time I watch Lincoln, Daisy and Crosby work.  They each have different mannerisms, and alert in different ways.  It helps me to watch Ellie and Mary handle their dogs, as they also teach me how to present an odor their dog has missed, or how to keep their dog working.

When I brought Pongo back out, he was much more focused.  He found all but two of the hides.   It was a wonderful evening!  I felt guilty that so much time had passed since we last practiced, but Pongo enjoyed every moment of it.  There is always forgiveness in a dog's heart. 


Pongo finds an egg near the water fountain.

By the time Crosby and Mary arrived, it was beginning to get dark.  Crosby was eager to get out of his vehicle after a long ride.  After a potty break, he got right to work.  All of the hides were paired with treats since it was the first time the dogs had worked in my yard and because all the dogs had had a break in training.  Crosby delighted us with his antics, going all the way under a stone bench to the other side to follow the odor of an egg hidden in front of it.  He was so excited he picked the egg up in his mouth!   

 

Here, Crosby finds an egg in the seat of a
 pergola my husband built for one of
our wedding anniversaries.

Other ideas for future egg hunts include: not putting odor in all of the eggs (similar to how we have worked with boxes for ORT preparation) (See my August 13, 2013 blog: Getting Ready for the ORT).  Another idea is not to pair all of them with treats.  Some of our eggs had a treat inside, or we placed a treat next to it on the ground.  Of course, dogs are always rewarded with treats from their handler when the find odor.

At nine o'clock with the light gone, we finally stopped our holiday hunt.  The dogs were in their blissful happy place, ready to go home for a dream-filled night.  I could only hope our dogs' dreams were full of following one odor to the next!

Happy Hunting, Canines!