What is Nose-Centric Dog Training & Reabilitation?
Nose-Centric™ Dog Training and Rehabilitation is a dog training system that optimizes a dog’s natural behaviors, especially sniffing, to promote healing, recovery from fear, and reduce reactivity. This method takes the dog’s sense of smell from overlooked to the forefront of training and rehabilitation. After watching, studying, rehabilitating, and training dogs for 15 years, I have learned that utilizing a dog’s sense of smell can improve confidence, attentiveness, and positive behavior while reducing reactivity. We can also form deeper, trusting connections with our dogs by speaking their language of sniffing.
Nose-Centric™ Dog Training and Rehabilitation is all about using a dog’s natural sniffing behavior as a reward. In humans, inhaling through the nose calms the vagus nervous system, helping to maintain a state of calm and prevent the activation of the fight-or-flight response, which is associated with stress hormones[i]. For dogs, sniffing can increase optimism and enhance their quality of life.[ii] In mice, sniffing stimulates the release of dopamine, a key neurotransmitter in the brain's reward system, linked to motivation and exploration[iii] Oddly, the olfactory system of a dog has not been studied much. But in 2022, it was found the olfactory pathways in dogs extend to various regions of their brains, way more extensively than humans’ olfactory systems, though scientists do not fully understand the significance of this connectivity.
Why did you Develop nose-centric Dog Training and Rehabilitation?
Working with severely fearful and feral dogs forced me to develop a method to reach these dogs and earn their trust, helping them become happy human companions. Traditional training methods lack the ability to build a trusting relationship with these dogs, especially within a reasonable timeframe. With Nose-Centric™ methods, dogs improve drastically in three sessions. I quickly learned that applying Nose-Centric™ methods help ALL dogs become more well-balanced.
Isn’t Nose-Centric™ just letting a dog sniff or do nose work?
No. Unlike “Sniffaris” or Nose-Work, where the handler is passive, Nose-Centric™ methods. require the handler to be proactive in a dog’s natural behaviors, including sniffing, to build trust. and overcome behavior concerns. Nose-Centric™ is also an entire system of how to build trust, use guided routine, acknowledgment, and become a trusted partner to better your dog’s quality of life. It is a totally different way of thinking about training your dog. (Hint - it's mostly about simple things you can do differently to help your dog.)
Reducing fear and anxiety
Builds trust and connection between dog and human
Teaches the dog to avoid conflict by sniffing (a dog’s natural way to avoid conflict)
Improves attention on the handler
Reduces alrm barking
Reduces reactivity
What Behaviors can Nose-Centric™ methods help with?
Does Nose-Centric™ use positive reinforcement?
Yes, but not in the common way of thinking. A dog using their nose, and many other activities I use in my rehab process, is a naturally rewarding behavior. I gauge how well the training is working by looking at the dog in front of me. If the dog is improving and happier to see me at the next session, what I am doing is working. My version of positive training is based on the long game. The dogs I work with have an extreme increase in welfare and quality of life. I consider that positive, and so does the dog. I put the least amount of stress possible on the dog. But for change to happen in any living creature, good stress (eustress) is a necessary component. If you avoid any stress in your life or your dog’s life, your life will stagnate. I am constantly putting good stress on myself by challenging my capabilities and learning more.
Dogs are capable of much more than most training methods give them credit for. They are willing to change quickly to feel better. Resilience is also an important component of a dog that can live a full life. The dogs in my program learn that we will face challenges together as a team, according to their capabilities, and succeed. Allowing a dog to languish in fear using slow and complicated training methods is inhumane, decreases dog welfare, and frankly, allows the dog to build fearful behavior habits, adding to the dog’s depression or anxiety. Dogs thrive when they can get exercise, enjoy the outdoors, and approach challenges with a positive attitude as a pro-social group. I have been having success rehabilitating dogs for adoption and my clients since 2009, and focusing on feral dogs since 2019.
Why Don’t Nose-Centric™ methods involve lots of food rewards?
Scientifically speaking, reinforcement builds behaviors. But trust isn’t a behavior. It’s a state of mind. To build trust with a human or a dog, shallow rewards do not cut it. Nose-Centric™ methods go deeper, beyond surface rewards, to build deep trust with your dog, and your dog in you.
In addition, many fearful and feral dogs will not take food rewards. Instead waiting to start rehab until they will take food, Nose-Centric™ methods allow the dog to start healing right away. The dog decides what is rewarding and they always choose improvement, exercise, walks, etc., even if it is a little bit stressful at first.
Dogs often find the bond with a human, and praise, more rewarding than food or other dogs (1). Dogs have evolved to cooperate with us to survive better.
Training based solely on food rewards will backfire. As soon as the food goes away, the human has broken the contract they made with the dog, and the dog won’t exhibit those behaviors.
I use plenty of food reinforcement when teaching obedience and recall. I also use it for decreasing fears of specific things, such as slippery floors. But I do not rely on it to build a trusting relationship with the dog.
A dog’s most valuable reward is living with a pro-social group that gives them safety and a good quality of life. We are enough for our dogs to follow if we act trustworthy in the dog’s eyes.
Video. comparing using food versus no food to increase a feral puppy’s comfort with touch
How do I incorporate Nose-Centric™. methods into my training?
Nose-Centric™ works great on its own, but can easily be incorporated into more traditional training methods. If you can connect and build trust with a dog; a more cooperative, rewarding, and understanding relationship is easily achieved. I find it is best to start with Nose-Centric™ methods to “break the ice” and then move on to more obedience-based training to fine-tune behaviors. This benefits ALL dogs.
For fearful and feral dogs, Nose-Centric™ methods are essential to help the dog break out of fearful behavior. Nose-Centric™ activities can be more fun and engaging for the human end of the leash, too.
Trainers - If you work with fearful or feral dogs, I can 99% guarantee this is not like any other training method you have experienced. The results will increase demand for your skills and improve results.
How do I Learn More??
Workshops, Online Courses, Consulting for Trainers, Private and Virtual Lessons, Social Media, What Dogs Have Taught Me Podcast
[i] Zaccaro, Andrea etal. Neural Correlates of Non-ordinary States of Consciousness in Pranayama Practitioners: The Role of Slow Nasal Breathing, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience (2022) https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.803904
[ii] Duranton C, Horowitz A, Let me sniff! Nosework Induces Positive Judgment Bias in Pet Dogs, Applied Animal Behaviour Science (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2018.12.009
[iii] Johnson, Natalie et. Al. Sniffing is Initiated by the Actions of Dopamine on Ventral 1 Striatum Neuronsdoi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.02.19.581052
1.Peter F. Cook, Ashley Prichard, Mark Spivak, Gregory S. Berns, Awake canine fMRI predicts dogs’ preference for praise vs food, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 11, Issue 12, December 2016, Pages 1853–1862, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw102