Right now I'm still working on getting her to find the scent (clove oil) wherever it's hidden. We've only been working with the clove oil for a little over a week. We started by having her find food. The three main scents in nosework are clove, birch and anise. My instructor went with clove just 'cause she finds it the least offensive of the 3,
.
As for the end picture - I don't know yet. There are actual nosework competitions that give out titles, but none in Ohio. I believe they have advancing levels and each level uses one of those three oils listed above. The dogs have to search inside and outside.
I have somebody coming to my nosework class this Tuesday who has trained detection dogs for about 15 years. He wants to see Inara and see what we're doing to do kind of a first evaluation as to whether she could become a true detection (narcotics, explosives, etc) dog. We're still in the very early stages (obviously!) but she's really showing a natural talent for this. Another dog in our class snarked at her while she was working a line of boxes and Inara just glanced at her and kept moving, so obviously she enjoys it and finds it more rewarding than being a bitchy, which is nice.
You do so many different things with Inara. She's a lucky girl.
Thanks.