Yesterday Mamie, Rainday’s Put the Blame on Mame, one of our Australian Shepherds, was awarded her AKC Detective Scentwork title. That took a lot of time, dedication, and hard work, something Australian Shepherds excel in. Congratulations, Mamie!
In a Detective Class competition an unknown number of “hides” in a variety of environments are found by the dog. The intent is to emulate as closely as possible the work of a true detection dog.
I’ll try to update this post with a picture of Mamie at work.
Congratulations, Mamie, and her dedicated owners!
Not a dog breed I think of having especially good scent skills but according to the relative who was a K-9 cop for a while what you really want is an intelligent working dog. That certainly describes an Australian shepherd or is their sense of smell underrated?
Steve
All dogs have senses of smells so much greater than ours from our perspective it’s like ESP. They derive their information about the world from (in descending order of importance): scent, hearing, sight, touch, taste. We, on the other hand, depend on sight, hearing, scent, touch, taste.
Some of our Samoyeds, not noted as scent dogs, could predict seizures before they occurred, presumably by scent.
While an Australian Shepherd may not be as gifted a scent dog naturally as, say, a bloodhound, basset, or beagle it’s probably as good as a GSD, Malinois, or Goldie.
For intelligence and work ethic Aussies, members of the herding group, are pretty darned good. Samoyeds, members of the working group, can also be good scent dogs but tend not to have the work ethic of Aussies. They get bored more easily.
Congratulations, but she needs a Sherlock hat and pipe. (Either, you are going to ban me, or the dogs are going to look snazzy.) She should have her ribbon on her chest.
If I am not mistaken, there are air and ground scent dogs. Supposedly, a bloodhound’s ears are to keep the ground scent concentrated. At least, that is what the Animal Channel said.
Mamie for President.
I thought of getting a deerstalker hat (for dogs) but I couldn’t justify the price.
Mamie, of course, would look snazzy. She always looks snazzy.