Trails and Tails Dog School

09/05/2026

So excited for the first day of fall classes and a brand new group of Nose Work students!!

09/02/2026

Gallatin Subaru was kind enough to let us search their vehicles tonight! It’s so helpful to be able to practice on cars in a more real world setting to get ready for the upcoming competitive events. Thank you Gallatin SUBARU!!!

08/25/2026

I’ll be headed to Colorado Nose Work Camp at the end of September to be part of the logistics team! Does anyone want to join me? It’s a great opportunity!

Want to come?
Please share.

08/16/2026

I want to send a special thank you to WEST PAW for letting us use their parking lot for nosework practice today! It’s so helpful to have new search locations to simulate competition scenarios. The teams all did great and it was so fun to see them get to work in a brand new place! Thank you!!!

Here’s Bonsai finding one of the hides incredibly fast with a super clear alert! What a little rockstar!

And the last picture is of my two dogs who get a portion of their daily food allowance in West Paw Toppls every day! I love these!

08/12/2026

Last year, Tracer and I completed our third NW3 title and I was so excited to move on to Elite searches. But I also knew that the search areas would be so much bigger and that Tracer would have no problem covering those areas if I wasn’t holding her back. So I decided I needed to get in better shape. Nose work is a sport after all! I finally had the motivation I needed to get healthier but I needed some help with the process.
I dedicated my winter to going to The Mountain Project, eating better, and getting faster so I could keep up with Tracer in our upcoming spring Elite trials. She gives 110% to every search and it only seemed fair that I step up to the challenge too! And it worked! We took home two First Place Overall Ribbons, a Third Place Overall Ribbon and a slew of first place search designations in our first three elite trials so far. I really appreciate all the help from the coaches at the Mountain Project and the awesome classes they put on.

And today, they let us use their parking lot for our Tuesday night drop in class!

Thank you Mike and all the other Mountain Project crew for letting us use your space tonight and for being such a big part of our success story!

Here’s one of my favorite searches from this year where I really had to hustle to keep up with her in a few spots!
https://youtu.be/NzWJxWZlN6w

08/11/2026

When setting up puzzles for my nose work dogs, I love thinking about how odor will move through a space and hypothesizing how my dog will solve the problem. It’s so fun to see into their incredible world through how they use their noses!

I’ve added my fall schedule including new nose work classes to my site. Sign ups are available now!

https://www.trailsandtailsdogschool.com/classregistration-nose-work

EASIER INTERIOR SEARCHES
Tips to Read the Environment

We’re supposed to search potentially productive spaces. Ok... so how do we decide that?

Start with the defaults: thresholds, corners, deep areas, vertical planes, downwind areas, and that random item sitting by itself. Great. But what modifies those defaults?

The environment.

For an interior search, start with six things:

OPENINGS: Doors. Windows. Connections between spaces.
HVAC + AIRFLOW: Vents. Returns. Fans. Exhaust.
TEMPERATURE: Sun. Heat sources. Cold surfaces. Differences across the room.
SPACE + OBJECTS: Corners. Voids. Under. Behind. Protected spaces. How the room and the objects in it shape the available space.
SURFACES: Hard. Soft. Transitions.
MOVEMENT: Doors. People. Equipment. Traffic. HVAC or fans cycling.

Six things. Takes a few seconds. Any one of them can change how you read the space. So what are they modifying?

Maybe that corner also has a return pulling air toward it. Maybe air is moving through the doorway at a threshold. Maybe furniture creates a void you would have barely considered otherwise. Sun, heat, cold surfaces, and surface transitions can all change where odor may become available.

Some factors stay fairly stable: room shape, furniture, surfaces, vent locations. Others can change while you work. Doors move. HVAC cycles. Someone walks through the adjoining room. A fan turns on.

Still the same search picture? Maybe. Maybe not.

Register the obvious environmental factors at the start. Let them modify how you read your default potentially productive spaces, then go search. 😉

As things change, keep asking: What here may change where odor becomes available?
Which environmental factor changes your read most often?

08/03/2026

I’m so proud of my students! I had three incredible private lessons yesterday with people who care so much about their dogs that they spent extra time, with lots of patience, just to make sure their dogs were comfortable, had agency in their choices, and had their needs met.

To be fair, this describes almost all of my students but yesterday, it just really struck me.

Here’s Daisy and Amanda. It took about an hour for Daisy to comfortably get out of the car, into the building, and ready to do one of her favorite things, scent work! She got worried about doors last week and needed some extra patience to help her decided that she really did want to come inside. ❤️

To all my amazing students looking out for their dogs, keep up the great work!