I’m Charlie Clarke and I really enjoy putting together puzzles for my dog to solve. Felix and I have been on our nosework journey since 2021, originally we started down this road to help Felix navigate his big feelings about the world. Since embarking we have discovered the magic of setting goals, designing puzzles, and completing increasingly complex searches.
I acquired Felix in the winter of 2019 knowing almost nothing about how to pick a puppy. He was a tiny black tri that vaguely resembled a potato. I had no idea how much he would teach me. In the following years he has taken me through BAT 2.0 by Grisha Stewart, Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt with a CU class taught by Julie Daniels, Fenzi Noswork classes by Stacy Barnett, and countless lessons with our awesome trainer Sandra Tung. This starting place is the synergy of all those voices bouncing around in my head. I’m striving to track our process as we progress, in triumph and failure. Nosework has opened up our world together.
Some bumps along the road have made this journey incredibly difficult. Firstly Felix has an incredibly sensitive tummy and novel treats are off the table. This meant that initially we had to work exclusively for kibble. It was a huge pain to train kibble eating as a reinforcing behavior in triggering environments. I even tried soaking his kibble in hot dog juice. Once we had a reinforcement strategy on board we could start playing.
