I read this article about ”The Kong method” by Simon Prins which was interesting to me since I reflect a lot on the subject.
I agree with the arguments Prins laid forward, but I also have other reflections which would speak up for Kong as a training aid for scent detection work. But exactly as Simon says (pun intended), we have to make sure WHY we use different methods and tools. What are your goals?
My goal is to be creative and find new ways of training scent detection without being scared of ”making mistakes” that can be harmful if you’re working professionally.
I believe that, through dog sport we can learn so much more about how to communicate with our furry colleagues. With no harm done to anyone, we can focus on moving training techniques forward in a creative way. And we can be many doing it!
We can also evaluate results and collect enormous amounts of information. Blind searches, double blind searches, reward systems.. The possibilities are endless. We just have to ask the right questions.
So thats why I think dog sport is one of the best ways to contribute to the dog training world and, in the end, also to society.
However, the sport have to be advanced enough to show real life scenarios and how they could be handled.
Such a sport is getting official in Sweden at the moment and Kong is the target scent. You can read more about it on Svenska Brukshundklubben homepage. I hope more countries will contribute to data collection in this way because it is so rewarding for everyone involved.
As Simon mentions in his article; it is totally different when you are supposed to do operational work with other odors. Then Kong will probably not be the best option. Kong can be present in many environments. It must be difficult, or impossible, to erase the ”love of kong”.
But if we look for Kong in dog sports, we can make it easy for a lot of people to train their dogs. Not only will it give thousands of dogs a better life, but it can also give information about the other parts of scent detection training. Scent detection is not only the imprinting of a specific scent.
Everyone can be involved, contribute and therefore also give us enormous amounts of information.
Moving on..
I believe that scent detection training could be split up in three categories:
1. Scent imprinting
I would say scent imprinting is the most difficult thing imaginable, since we have no idea what the dogs actually smell. No matter how much we try to guess, we will never fully understand their way of processing odors and what molecules they are working with. We don’t even know how the molecular information is transferred and translated into brainwaves.
I think we have to be very humble towards the fact that we might think we know, we might be able to find some things out, but we can never be inside the dogs brain and actually ”see” how they process everything. We cannot imagine what it’s like to choose using scent instead of eyesight. There are a lot of things that I think we cannot imagine, but thats for another time.
Scent imprinting is so complicated because of that. We try to explain to another species to find something that we can’t even see or comprehend.
However, this is not the part I have chosen to focus on. No matter how interesting I find it, I think that’s what most people are already focusing on. A lot of new ideas and devices are already being created.
But no scent detection training is complete by just being able to find a specific scent in a sterile environment.
2. Search techniques and communication
No matter how well the dog knows what it’s looking for, its not gonna be able to communicate a find, if they don’t have a way of telling us where they found something. They can’t find an odor in any environment if never exposed to it. They can’t work for hours without having started in small steps. They can’t find a specific scent without being able to concentrate on its work. They can’t find it without knowing where to search for it. Scent detection is about so much more than just understanding the scent picture. The dog is our colleague and friend. To do the work together, we need to cooperate and go through many processes and obstacles. We need to be there to support the dog and use our eyes to see where the dog hasn’t been searching, for example.
3. Understanding and reading the dog
To be able to communicate with another species we need to open up and be aware of small signals. It’s not so easy when we can’t speak to them. But maybe it’s not surprising that we can’t communicate with dogs. After all, we can’t even understand other people even if we speak the same language.
We can never understand each other without stepping out of ourselves and take in what it could be like from another perspective. Your dog is trying to communicate with you all the time, but sometimes we are totally blind to it.
To be able to work well with scent detection I believe that we have to learn how to communicate with a language that both of us can agree on. And that starts with trying to understand. I also think it means being open for dogs being so much more intelligent than we thought so far.
I’m not scared of comparing human thinking to dogs’, but with knowing that there are quite some big differences. Like scent- and memory usage for example. Also, the fact that they are predators and have strong instincts is something to be well aware of. But that doesn’t exclude that they can have a much more advanced cognition and understanding than we can find out through research.
I think the only way to truly understand the dog is to spend lots and lots of time with them. Take the time to try to understand how they are feeling and what they are trying to communicate. And same with making them understand what we’re trying to say. All communication is not words although it seems as if they can understand those too. So maybe we could try to understand some of their communication.
Since we can’t jump into other peoples’, or animals’, brains we can never truly know what others are thinking. Words we learn will always have a special meaning in our own brain, which might not be the exact same as in someone else’s. Another human being is not less intelligent just because they have different ”operation systems” in their brains or different experiences from life.
But being aware of the differences in the way we’re thinking will help with communication between both humans and dogs. You can, for example, read up on how it is to be autistic and you will see that there are many things that are working differently in different human brains too. Everyone is different, human and dog, but everyone also contributes with their special strengths.
Anyway, what I wanted to get to is that the work we do in scent detection is all about understanding each other. No matter how it’s done, it’s a must for our cooperation to work.
”The Kong training method”
When we talk about Kong, it’s almost always attached to a certain way of training. Using hunting instincts and play with a toy to make the dog love to search for it. There are different ways of doing that and many techniques are trending. Here I agree with Simon Prins, ”As trainers, our job isn’t to blindly follow trends, but to think critically about our goals and choose the best approach to achieve them—efficiently and effectively. This means questioning what we’ve been taught, adapting when needed, and staying true to our integrity.” So no matter how we decide to use it, we need to be aware of why.
I’m using Kong as a training odor without a method being attached to it. I believe that Kong as a target scent can teach us a lot about how dogs work. How they communicate and handle distraction odors, among other things. But then we would have let go of the fact that it has to be used in a certain way. I would like to look at it as a ”tool”.
The simplicity of working with this material is hugely beneficial, because we can strip off the way we try to understand odor and just work with what we can see. Sight being our preferable sense it will feel much easier to be able to control with our eyes. We like to be in control!
Generalization of the smell
With Kong we are working, as mentioned above, with a material we can see. The dogs can ”see” more than what we can with our noses. Dogs can also see where the Kong has been before. The time it was there, and how long ago. How they do it, who knows, but its amazing!
When we see a Kong or a Kong piece, we can tell that it is a Kong by the way it feels, the way it looks and even its odor. But we also understand that a Kong can look different depending if it’s old, its been in mud or maybe covered in oil… or split into pieces. We still understand that it is Kong we are seeing. We generalize.
I believe the dogs can do this too, even if it’s in a different way (which can be frustrating at times).
Of course, when you think of it. All Kongs must have something in common even for the dog, right? Since we can know if a Kong piece is there, we can be pretty sure that it releases scent molecules from its surface all the time. We can also agree on the fact that it changes all the time.
Simon wrote ”Take Kong, for example. We know that one piece of Kong is not the same as another. Some trainers cut them to specific weights and sizes, others boil them before use. Some handle them with gloves, while others don’t. Some add specific human scents. Odor off-gassing varies depending on environmental conditions” which is completely true! They are all different, but if we, as humans, can generalize what a Kong is, why would the dog not be able to?
When I work with Kong, I stopped trying to understand what the dog ”sees” but instead I want focus on what I know with my own senses. I want the dog to look for all pieces of Kong that are big enough for me to see. I have some sort of control over what the dog is searching for.
Forgotten pieces
When I can see the pieces, I can also control if the dog is right. Simon talked about a risk with using Kong. He wrote that it led to ”False alerts – […] on pieces of Kong left behind by other trainers.”
But if the dog found Kong, and was imprinted on that, then its not a false alert?
I use these pieces people left behind, what I call ”jokers”, to learn something. A test. I don’t get angry when people forgets Kong pieces because I can check if they’re there. For the new dogs, I think that if they don’t get a reward now and then doesn’t matter. You will learn something!
My dogs alert well so I dig a bit, move some things, and there it is! If not, then its a false alert. I use a variable reward system so I can use my signal for ”good work, you found something, let me check”. If they have a good indication I can also minimize the area I need to look. Its so cool when they indicate and I don’t believe it. I check, and there it is! 10 cm under the soil, one meter into the cupboard… in the fridge..
Scent threshold – calibration
However, there is a glitch. The dogs can indicate where the Kong has been, but is not present anymore. This is impossible for us to know and control. Nowadays many, many use Kong as training odor and we can find it anywhere.
Something we can know, on the other hand, is that if the Kong is still in place, it will release new molecules all the time. Even if they change over time, they seem to have a ”core scent” of Kong. If we generalize the smell well enough, they should be able to include all Kong-smells. More about that later on.
So we can imagine that there are tiny molecules of the Kong smell left that we can’t see. But it does get weaker with time. No new molecules are released from the surface. Ghost smell.
There must be a difference in the scent picture and the dogs should be capable of analyzing and excluding residual odor. But there must also be a similarity in the smell, so that it’s more probable that they indicate on residue than just anywhere. So it doesn’t seem right to treat it as false alert either.. (Maybe a subject for discussion? )
When we work like this, we can learn a lot about residual vs. true* odor with Kong. How does dogs handle residual odor? Can they always differentiate residual from true smell?
With dog sports we can, without any damage to anyone, study how much effort it takes to discriminate between the two. How long after do they alert on residual? Can they still do it when they are tired? How much do we need to train them to be able to discriminate between the two in difficult situations?
(*Couldn’t think of a better word)
I have noticed myself, and also read about, the fact that dogs like to generalize odor, and will do so with residual if not trained continuously. More about that in this article. I noticed that if I didn’t ”calibrate” the dog in a month or two, they went back to generalizing the residual with true kong (indicated on residual). When I read about the olfactory neurons in ”The School of Canine Science” course ”Scent for six” I got a hint of an explanation.
The olfactory neurons are getting renewed every 30-60 days and then they are getting shaped after what the dog has been smelling since the last renewal of neurons. So it makes me think that there is a connection. The odors we want the dogs to smell needs to be repeated often, especially if there are small differences to analyze in the scent picture. Like between residual and tiny pieces. Can they feel the difference between residual scent in a drawer compared to a tiny Kong piece still there? How long does the residual stay in the drawer?
I think this could be further studied and I hope it will be. It could help in our understanding of dogs ”false alerts”, that might actually be on residue. This is something that could be more experimented with. Kong could then fit as a safe and easy alternative to other odors.
I have an exercise that I call ”calibration training”. It’s actually used by many and have different names, but I like ”calibration” because it’s exactly what we teach the dogs. How small ”pieces” of Kong should they indicate on? Can they choose to totally ignore residue in a proficient way? Let’s find out..
Easy to handle
We can all agree that Kong is super easy to handle compared to many other training odors. I have shaky hands and got so frustrated when I spilled drops of liquid odor and ruined the search area for I don’t know how long. How long does the liquid smell stay? I can’t see it, so I don’t know. With Kong it doesn’t matter if I drop it since I trained my dog to not indicate where there is no Kong present at the moment.
It’s easy to generalize since we can find it everywhere. It can be handled by different people, maybe put in different places, get scent from oil or soil. It’s still a Kong, and we know it. Just need to teach the dogs that it doesn’t matter where the Kong has been or what it’s mixed with. It’s still a Kong. So no worries about trying to figure out the scent picture. Just make sure that you train with as many different Kong pieces as possible.
Training more often
I mean, you can always have some Kong pieces in your pocket. It makes it SO much easier to actually get to training. When you start thinking too much and need a lot of tools you will not train as often. I think that the best way to learn is to practice. Practice and evaluate. With Kong you could easily get someone else to put pieces in an area and you go there to search by yourself. Which pieces did the dog miss? The evaluation would be in a real environment but super easy to make.
Since it’s easier to handle, you will do it more often, and that makes your dog more physically and psychologically fit. Better body & brain – better job. It also gets easier to use a high sniffing frequency, easier to concentrate over longer periods of time and have many other benefits.
Search techniques
When you can move the Kong within an area unlimited amount of times, it also opens up to unlimited amounts of opportunities to train search patterns and so much more. The residual smell will attract the interest of the dog, but getting closer it will analyze and decide not to indicate because it was only residual. That will also train the dogs brain to be careful of the scent picture. ”Is it really what i think it is?”. Control.
The dog will work better when having a better relation to its colleague (the human). Spending more time with the dog and having fun makes a good base for a great relation. Imagine playing the searching game almost every day!
Kong and dog sports helps me plan my training so that I can do it in a fun way on the walks or just anywhere. Just throw out a little piece of Kong somewhere and have fun! Then I go to trials and see if my plans are working.
Right now I’m working on search patterns to be able to better cooperate with my dog. It makes it easier for me to repeat enough times that we’re working together. Refine our communication. It’s amazing in so many ways.
None of this training would have happened if I always had to bring millions of things to clean and handle the odor.
What do you think? Pros and Cons?