Everyone who watches Iona search loves her nose press/freeze alert.  This is sometimes called a “passive alert” because she is not actively digging or biting at source.  Having a trained final response like this has its pros and cons and teaching your dog a nose press is never a substitute for reading your dog. 

This type of alert is a conscious decision from the dog and as a result, they can false or fringe alert.  Trained final alerts will often times disappear when a dog is trialing due to the increased pressure.   That being said, I love Iona’s alert because it is accurate and not destructive.  

To train this, we will split the skills into two parts:  Training the nose press alert, and teaching your dog to search.  

When your dog is nose pressing, they will be holding their head still for a few seconds.  It is important to teach this concept to your dog before you even introduce odor.  A great way to do this is with a chin rest.  This is a very versatile tool and can be used for all kinds of animal husbandry tasks.  Basically, you are going to mark your dog when they have their chin on your hand and then feed them.  You will very gradually wait a little bit longer till you mark and feed them.  This will result in a sustained chin rest.  We will be doing the same thing with our nose press on odor so this is very good practice for you and your dog.  Please refrain from grabbing your dog.  Remember that we always want an eager dog. We want them to think, “this human is just giving away this cheese, this is so easy”.