# Teaching to respond to a new scent



## Karin Niessen (Feb 9, 2009)

I found this nice question at a Dutch forum, I'm wondering what your opinions are (apart from how smart doing it would be, it's just about the theory of doing it).

If you want a dog searching for let's say tobacco. Which dog would be fastest to train.

- A fully trained SAR dog (or any other scenting-dog)
- A 'fresh' dog or puppy that has no experience at scenting


I think (but am not sure) that I will be quite able to teach my dog to respond to a different scent relatively quick. she already finds both training-victims at training, and her ball-on-a-rope when just walking (as I can't aim and it ends in the bushes 9 out of 10 times). So she is already 2-scent-sensitive, she knows how to search using her nose, all she has to learn is to respond to a new scent... Of course connected to a new command... Already have the Dutch word for search for her toy, English for SAR, so ummm German or French or something would be next, lol...

So I think an already trained scenting dog would be faster to teach a new scent. I'm just not too sure about reliability... Even when using different commands...


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

I would think adding a new scent would be way easy but I would not want to cross train. No way. 

If my dog writes me a letter and tells me he is smart enough to know the difference between looking for two different types of scent source without alerting on the first one he finds, I may consider it.


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## mike suttle (Feb 19, 2008)

I was asked by my local Federal prison if I could provide them with a tobacco detection dog from time to time when they needed me. I used one of our breeding females that I had already fully trained in narcotics detection, and added tobacco to her. She picked up the new scent with great ease, but this is a little different than what you are asking. In this case she was allowed and encouraged to indicate on narcotics and tobacco, same command, I just added one more source of her paycheck. 
But to answer your question, yes, it will always be much easier to add a new odor onto a dog that already understands to concept of the game, the question is......is it a good idea?? In my case it did not matter at all because the dog was only a breeding female who was trained by me as a demo dog, she was not a working street dog and if she indicated on either target odor in the prison they were happy.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

I would agree with Konnie and Mike that adding a new scent would be the easiest route. 
No problem if it's an "additional" scent for the dog to find.
Trying to change the dog over to a "different" scent would be cross training and create problems.


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