Scent Work is one of the few dog sport activities that can be held in all types of weather. Regardless of the season or what Mother Nature throws at competitors, as long as it is safe, the trial will go on. Do you find yourself dreading a weather report for an upcoming trial? Thinking to yourself, "It will be too (enter weather condition)...we will never succeed!". Then you need to listen to this podcast, where we will discuss some tips on how you can help your dog overcome some of these stumbling blocks, and what you should keep in mind when you are implementing your training plan.

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Looking to build some skills that will help you become a better Scent Work handler? Take a look at our Handler Scent Work Skills courses. 

Know your dog needs to work on a particular skill or aspect of their Scent Work training? Our Advanced Scent Work courses have what you need. 

Need tips on how to succeed in a particular Scent Work competition organization? Find what you are looking for with our Competition Venue courses.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the Scent Work University, All About Scent Work Podcast. In this podcast we'll be talking about all things Scent Work. We'll be giving you behind the scenes look as far as what your instructor or trial officials may be going through. We'll be giving you training tips, and we'll just be discussing everything that goes along with doing Scent Work with your dog, whether you're interested in competition or not.

In this particular episode, we're gonna be talking about the effect of weather, and how it is you'd be able to train your dog to be able to work within a variety of different conditions. Alright, let's get started.

Before we get started, I just wanna take a really quick moment to introduce myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I am the Owner and Lead Instructor for both Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. These are online dog training platforms that are designed to connect outstanding trainers with as many dog owners as possible. Both SWU and DSU are designed to provide quality, convenience, and flexibility. So we hope that you'll check them out to see if there are any online programs that may be suitable for both you and your dog. Without further ado, let's dive into the podcast.

If you're currently competing in Scent Work, it's more likely than not that you've come across a situation where you thought that the weather was going to negatively effect your performance. You may have told yourself, it's too hot, or it's too cold, or it's too rainy, or it's too snowy. There's something going on weather wise that's going to prevent your dog from being able to be successful at that trial, but the real question is, is that true? And what we wanna talk about in this podcast is, while you should always put the weather into consideration, it shouldn't be a block or a preventative for your dog actually being successful.

So one of the first things that we have to discuss is that weather absolutely will effect odor. It will change your odor picture. With that in mind, it's important that your dog actually understands what those odor pictures look like when the weather is in those different conditions. In other words, if you were to only practice when your dog was searching in ideal conditions, low humidity, nice low 70's, perfect weather, no clouds, no rain, no snow, not too hot, not too cold, but if that's the only time they ever got to play, then if you were to bring them to a trial that did offer one of those different weather conditions, your dog simply may have never seen that picture before. They may never have seen what the odor looks like in those conditions, and therefore, they may very well say I have no idea what to do.

So with that in mind, we as trainers, want to be able to expose our dog to as many of these different conditions as possible, as long as it's safe, but there's another element to this. We'll take the example of a very hot day. When the weather is ve