Just for Professional Trainers

Scent discrimination is one of the "advanced" obedience exercises, but it is actually one of the easiest to train. Why? You are working with the dog's single most acute sense: smell. Although the word is politically charged, in behavioral terms "discrimination" simply means a choice made on the basis of established criteria. In the case of scent articles, that criterion is the handler's scent ("find the one that smells like me").

It wasn't until 2000, however, when eight members of the Gemini training staff attended the APDT conference in Houston, that clicker training really "clicked." As Paul remembers, "We sat around and talked about it and said 'It's truly more effective and it's better for the dogs. We're going to close our eyes and jump.'" Looking back, Paul is proud of that decision. "It took guts to walk out of Houston and say 'We're going to throw the choke collars out and order some clickers.'"