You probably already know that dogs have an incredible sense of smell. According to estimates, a dog’s nose is between 100,000 and 100 million times more sensitive than a human’s. Some dogs are trained to use their noses to detect bombs, drugs, cancer and now even COVID-19—a dog’s nose can be an actual life-saver.
But what you may not know is that we can harness their sniffing superpowers to make them calm, focused and better behaved so you can enjoy relaxing, stress free walks.
Using scentwork as a means to make a dog calmer, more focused and well behaved just works. Traditional training has you drilling dull, repetitive exercises that are completely unnatural to dogs. We tap into dogs’ senses and utilise what already comes naturally to them so that not only are they well behaved, but they’re also calm, happy and fulfilled.
Now, you would be forgiven for thinking Scentventure is ‘just’ scentwork. It’s the first part of our name after all! But Scentventure is so much more than that. It combines training and behaviour modification with scentwork and adventure to help stressed & reactive and bored & distracted dogs behave calmly in every area of life – so you can enjoy fun, freedom and adventure.
‘Adventure’ might not be quite what you think either though! Let me explain from the beginning.
There are 4 Compass Points in Scentventure - they’re the pillars that support a happy, healthy dog.
Scent
Exploration
Environment
Partnership
I’ve explained the importance of the Scent Compass Point for calm canine behaviour, but where do the rest fit in?
Environment is our adventure Compass Point - we’re out there ‘in the wild’ mastering the environment where you walk and using what we have around us to stop your dog pulling on the lead or having meltdowns, to defeat distractions and regain your dog’s focus FAST.
Exploration involves sniffing too; after all, dogs explore the world and make sense of life through their sense of smell. It taps into dogs’ natural sense of curiosity to leave them tired and relaxed. Exploration is about discovery - which brings us back to the ‘adventure’ part of our name.
Partnership is also a journey of discovery, but in a different sense - it’s discovering your dog; what they really want, what they’re motivated by, why they behave the way they do so that you know exactly how to improve their behaviour.
You discover:
What’s really the problem? Because it’s often not what you think. When you start to work with us we usually discover that there are deeper layers we need to peel back to get to the root cause of the problem in order to fix it.
What does your dog actually like? So often we have a very human-centric view of what our dogs should enjoy. Each dog is an individual. In Scentventure we show you different training styles and activities to find out which ones your dog responds best to. What you’ll probably find is that you need different ones at different times, so we give you the entire toolkit.
How to read how your dog is feeling in order to prevent meltdowns before they occur. Seeing the early warning signs that your dog isn’t happy prevents a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness and it means you don’t push your dog into situations they’re not happy with.
The exact tools, techniques and strategies that work for your dog so that you know exactly how to keep your dog calm, happy and well behaved in any situation.
There are crossovers between the Compass Points. Partnership spans all four Compass points because as well as specific training or behavioural plans for the issue that your individual dog may have (whether that's reactivity, recall, pulling on the lead or barking in the house etc), the 3 other Compass Points feed into Partnership because they improve bond and relationship, help your dog focus on you and ignore the many distractions out there.
You can see now why it’s a connected lifestyle approach!
It’s also important to say that Scentventure is seasonal. We tend to focus on different Compass Points according to the time of year. In our private membership Club Dogwood, a heck of a lot of planning goes into our annual calendar; we make sure members have the training that’s most beneficial month by month.
Spring and Summer are ideal Environment seasons as we want to be out on walks making the most of the outdoors. And I love dusting off all of our big Scentventure equipment in the dryer months!
Exploration and Scent are ideal indoor Compass Points so we do a lot of those in Autumn and Winter.
Scent is just one of the pillars that support a happy, healthy dog. Like any system, the whole is exponentially greater than the sum of the parts. Apply any one of the Compass Points and you will gain from it, but the real results come when they are applied in their entirety. The result is a calm, focused dog and a happier, more relaxed you.
So there you go. A Scentventure dog is only one quarter scent.
