Dog confidence building with sniffing games

You might have heard that nosework, scent work, or scent-based games are good for building your dog's confidence. But what does that mean, and how does it work?

Sniffing games, if used correctly, can provide your fearful dog with mental and physical exercise and enrichment. Besides being fun for your dog, sniffing games can also create a strong history of positive reinforcement for behaviors that are useful in lots of settings, like sniffing, moving around, and eating treats. 

How is all of this connected to "confidence"?  Confidence isn't a behavioral term.  In my opinion, the most useful way to operationalize the idea of "confidence" when it comes to our fearful dogs is "A learning history characterized by a high rate of positive reinforcement in many settings."  In other words, our dogs might look and feel more "confident" when they learn to use their behavior to produce things they like (positive reinforcement) in lots of different contexts. 

Back to sniffing games. If your goal is to use sniffing games to build "confidence", your #1 goal is to make sure your dog's efforts are heavily reinforced. That means setting up games with lots of easy wins for your dog, and only VERY slowly moving sniffing games into new and more challenging settings.  This is what we do in my Sniffing Games for Fearful Dogs class.

In this video, I cover the link between sniffing games and "confidence", and show a short example of little Pancake learning to play sniffing games in the front yard. 

If you're struggling to get your dog interested in enrichment at all, check out my free guide to Your Fearful Dog's 1st Enrichment Game.