nosePLAY: Part 1

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What is one of your favorite childhood play memories? Mine is from my youth in West Fargo, North Dakota. We had a small tool shed in the backyard with a shingled roof that I would climb onto so I could jump off into the grass. So fun! This summer, outside of Yosemite, I climbed up a rock formation along a river and jumped from the top ledge into a deep pool of water some thirty feet below. The kid in us never leaves us.

In his book, Play, Stuart Brown fills the pages with science and sensibility to convince even the most serious among us that play is essential to human and animal life. For many of us, play is a luxury afforded only to children and eccentrics. Being an adult means getting down to business, working, being responsible, being serious, producing outcomes, not wasting time, not being wrong. It might seem to be too late to turn a grumpy gus into a giddy gil, but, as we’re going to learn, humans and dogs are among the most eternally juvenile and playful of any species, ever. The option to play never goes away.

When I started nose work classes with Muriel back in 2008, there was a magical, playful vibe to the experience. As a total scent newbie, the mystery of how a dog could enter a huge room and end up at the source of a tiny scented cotton swab pulled me in immediately. I learned some basics and off I went with my dog. I spent countless hours, multiple times a day, putting out hides for Muriel and marveling at her abilities. We were truly at play.

Between then and now, the sport of nose work has grown like an adolescent Dwayne Johnson, and in the aging process, play is more and more frequently overshadowed by the serious business of training dogs and getting titles. When the pressure is on to get your dog in a class, to do everything right and nothing wrong, to earn the titles, to level up, to win – well, there’s no time for play.

With the guidance of Brown’s book, you’ll be able to easily understand what play is, how to engage in play, why play is essential to lifelong health and growth, and how play can prepare you for the unknown. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to play, especially with a canine partner. Most importantly, you and your dog will experience true fun in nose work when you see it as nosePLAY!

The Properties Of Play

Stuart Brown admits that he hates to think of play as having a “definition”. Infants, toddlers, and adolescents naturally engage in play, it need not be contained and explained – except, when an adult has lost his connection with play, then it helps to give play some structure. Here are Brown’s properties of play:

Apparently Purposeless (done for its own sake): Play should not be obviously linked to a goal. Play is the goal of play. When a kid makes a pile of leaves to jump into, there is no conscious ulterior motive for this, he does it because it’s fun to play in this way. When I search with a dog, it’s for the fun of searching with the dog. There doesn’t have to be a lesson plan or a skill being worked on, there doesn’t have to be a competition venue, or a judge, or any other humans at all. Searching is fun for its own sake. If you’ve never experienced the joy of searching with a dog in this way, and really appreciating play without goals, you are missing out.

Voluntary: No one is making you or your dog “play” the game of nose work. At least, that should be the case if you want it to be play. In Brown’s book (pages 21-24), he tells the story of an Eskimo sled dog and a polar bear who voluntarily engage in a play session. The dog invites the bear to play, the bear accepts, and both are free to stop at any time. Many examples of voluntary play abound among human children on playgrounds. Most adults know to let a toddler lead the way when playing, and to be sensitive to the toddler’s need for the play to change, pause, or just be done. Most adults know to treat puppies this way, too. You naturally have what it takes to make nose work a voluntary play experience.

I really enjoy giving attention to the invitation to play nose work each time I search with a dog. Sometimes I am the one inviting the dog to play, sometimes the dog is inviting me. When nose work is truly voluntary, the dog almost always wants to play. If it seems like the dog is rejecting the invite to play, there is good reason; if not related to a clear threat from the dog’s perspective, it is almost always in response to a human with a distracted mind or a negatively fixed mind, or a goal oriented mind. If you show up to play, you need to positively attune to your dog.

Inherent Attraction: Play is fun. It’s intriguing. If the game of nose work is play for you and your dog, you’ll both be eager to engage. Inherent attraction should be wondered about from your dog’s perspective. What is it that is so fun for your dog about playing the game of nose work? Hmmm. You don’t need an answer. Just wonder about it.

Freed From Time: When we play, time flies. While time pressure can be part of play, it typically is antithetical to play. I used to focus A LOT on time pressure. Nose work competition is all about time. There is no time to waste playing around with odor. There is no time to waste celebrating a find. No time, no time, no time. Well, there is time. The game of nose work transcends time. When dog and human are flowing in the conversation of the search, time passes without notice. When a dog is playing the game of nose work and enjoying the freedom to express herself, we make time for this unique and special communication. Time does not rule play. Interestingly, some people cannot stand to search with their dog for very long. They are counting on the experience being short in duration. They don’t want to get lost in the search, they want the clock to tick and the time to stop and the search to end. Sometimes, people point the finger at the dog, saying that they don’t have the stamina or ability to search for very long. This is very true, if, from the dog’s perspective, we are not playing. A dog who is playing the game of nose work will voluntarily search for far longer than a few minutes. Want to spot a human who approaches nose work playfully? Look for a human who searches with her dog freed from time.

Diminished Consciousness of Self: You are truly playing when you just don’t care what anyone thinks about you. Shedding your ego and sense of self and just enjoying the game. Dogs can do this effortlessly (I mean, they lick their own hoo-haw in mixed company without a moment of hesitation). Adults need to be intentional and practice to play egoless nose work – even all alone, we get self-conscious and self-critical.

It starts with mindset and language. If you dedicate your mind to wonder and curiosity, that’s a start. If you get intentional about the words you speak when you search with your dog, that’s great, too. Being dedicated and intentional means you must recognize when you stray from your stated path. For example, if you are searching with a dog and he returns to a found hide, and you think, “that’s a hide we already found, my dog needs to get back to work”, and then you say to your dog, “you got that one, find more”, you are not in a wondering and curious mindset, and your words are reflecting a self-conscious notion of right and wrong, rather than unselfconscious playfulness. If your dog returns to a found hide and you think to yourself, “hmmmm. I wonder why we’re back here at this hide?”, and then you get curious about what your dog is telling you, you are definitely not bringing ego and notions of right and wrong into the partnership with your dog. If you need to speak, you might say, “We came from that sign post over there, and my dog’s head was held high and his nose tilted up, then he zigzagged tightly left and right, slowed down and oriented into the wind, sped up, skidded to a stop, dashed around in a tight circle and then turned into the wind with his head held high and searched high up on this fence, before tracing his nose across the ground and sniffing along the fence to this low hide that we found earlier. There’s a reason we ended up here, I’m going to celebrate what my dog has told me and then I’ll see what he wants to tell me next.” These words are reflective of a human who is unselfconsciously in the flow of conversation with her dog. She is focusing on what is happening – independent of right or wrong – and she is living in the dog’s expression of the situation. From this place, we can playfully explore many variations of the game of nose work.

Improvisational Potential: Play leaves the door open to the unexpected. As Brown says, “We aren’t locked into a rigid way of doing things. We are open to serendipity, to chance. We are willing to include seemingly irrelevant elements into our play.” Here is where the true gift of nose work can be experienced by dog and human. Countless times I have experienced the unexpected when playing the game of nose work.

One of my favorite experiences of search improvisation was with Ole the doberman searching at a large, hilly, forested regional park across the street from a lake. I’d hidden two hides for Ole and his human to search blind, one at a picnic shelter atop a hill and one on a tree at the bottom of the same hill. At the bottom of the hill was the parking lot where Ole was car crated. A strong wind was blowing the odor away from the parking lot, up the hill, through the shelter and across a field into the woods.

On this day, Ole was not alone. He was sharing a session with Bounce the black lab, and Kena the cattle dog mix. Bounce and her human were long time friends of Ole, but Kena and her human were new friends, and new to nose work. When Ole got out of his crate, he raced us away from the hill with the picnic shelter, across the parking lot and up a smaller hill with a bathroom building. After working around the building he cut down the hill onto a paved path through the trees. The path led to a ‘T’ junction where Ole began to act in an unusual way. We could tell this because Ole is a confident and clear communicator. When he’s playing the game of nose work, he moves freely in any direction, and across any distance. He describes edges of odor and collection points – he shares what he knows, often repeatedly. When there are no problems to solve, his energy changes and he will often come to his human and press his body against her. What Ole did at the junction on the path was to get lost investigating the leaves of a large fallen branch, and a pile of seed pods on the path. This could have multiple meanings, so we watched with open minds. Next, he went to Kena’s human. He repeated this communication: branch, seed pods, Kena’s human. We played along with what we thought Ole was telling us, and decided he might want Kena and her human to search. We checked with Ole to see if he wanted to go back to his crate, and he readily left the area to head back to his crate.

We got Kena out of her crate and what happened next was amazing. Kena, this “novice” dog, immediately raced to the path, blew through the ‘T’ junction with a hard left turn and blazed up the hill to the field just downwind of the picnic shelter and the hides. She then communicated an interest to advance across the field towards the shelter. Her human showed agreement and off they went, in a dance with the odor over and around the picnic tables, playing with the path to source. When Kena and her human found the hide high on a fence post at the edge of the shelter, it was an occasion to celebrate. And, not just because of what Kena had done, but because Ole really seemed to want the new team to play. Ole has always been about his people and their dogs – his tribe. If we weren’t open to the way he wants to play at times, we wouldn’t be connecting with an essential part of who he is, and we wouldn’t be having nearly as much fun.

Continuation Desire: We want the play to keep going. I can spot a parent who never lets their kid play longer than planned at the park. The kid throws a crazy fit when it’s time to go. I can tell a human who never lets their dog search longer than planned. This human’s dog will resist when taken away from the search area. Just as it’s important to understand a dog’s voluntary engagement to start a search, it is equally important to understand a dog’s desire to continue searching and to put them in control of this desire, so you can create the rules of play together.

There are many opportunities to strengthen continuation desire in your relationship with your dog. The easiest way is to listen to your dog. This can involve listening to when he is hungry, when he needs to go outside, when he isn’t feeling well, when he expects to go somewhere with you. Especially when your dog is speaking to you at unexpected times or in unexpected ways. It can also involve nose work specific listening. While searching with my dog, Miles, at a large park & ride garage, he shifted his focus to a couple of questionable items at the bottom of a ramp – the first one was a used condom (BARF), which I asked him not to touch, the second was what looked like a smashed plastic condiment cup (less barf, but still). It seemed odd that he had no interest in these items early in his search effort, and now he was licking at this smashed condiment cup. I went over to him and pet him and talked through what was happening. Then, I let him speak to me, and he started searching again, heading away from the plastic cup, then making a wide arc back to it. This time, he told me the ground was important and the objects on the ground were collecting odor. He moved away from the cup and worked the grooved concrete of the ramp until he landed upon a rock covering a tube hide! When we make the effort to listen to our dogs, we both increase our desire to keep the game going.

The Wheel Of Play – Scott Eberle, vice president for interpretation at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, has a framework for play that further helps the adult mind cede to the playful child’s mind:

Anticipation: Play involves a bit of anxious energy, wonder, curiosity, and risk. This leads to…

Surprise: The unexpected, a discovery, a new sensation or idea, or shifting perspective. This produces…

Pleasure: A good feeling, like the pleasure we feel at the unexpected twist of a good joke. Next we have…

Understanding: The acquisition of new knowledge, a synthesizing of distinct and separate concepts, an incorporation of ideas that were previously foreign, leading to…

Strength: The mastery that comes from constructive experience and understanding, the empowerment of coming through a scary experience unscathed, of knowing more about how the world works. Ultimately, this results in…

Poise: Grace, contentment, composure, and a sense of balance in life.

Eberle describes this as a wheel. Once we reach poise, we are ready to go to a new source of anticipation, starting the ride all over again.

I set a large area search for a cattle dog and his human at a riverside park in Minneapolis that quite nicely followed the Wheel Of Play. Out of 4 hides, there was 1 that I placed on top of a parking lot pay station, which is where all of the human observers decided to stand (leave humans with no knowledge of where hides are and they will frequently stand right in front of them). This dog worked the edges of odor some 30-40ft from the hide, then stretched his head forward and low and energetically moved in a straight line towards the pay station. When he got close to the hide, he jumped up on each person with excitement. His human chose this time to celebrate what her dog had shown her and to let another dog come search.

The next dog to search was a doberman who is empowered to choose his toy as needed during the search. He found a high hide in a tree roughly the same area as the other dog had begun his intentional movement towards the pay station hide – and he wanted his toy. While playing with his toy, the doberman started to circle and open up his space, then he began an energetic movement towards the pay station and the people. As he neared the pay station, he set his toy down and wove a path among the people to the hide on top of the pay station. Everyone celebrated the unexpected find! The human with the cattle dog was surprised and pleased at discovering that her dog had led her to a hide and implored the people to move or help. She understood the importance of listening to her dog and being in wondering mode when he communicates in unexpected ways (this cattle dog doesn’t usually excitedly jump on people). She gained some confidence from going through the experience of a complex search in a dynamic environment, and learned more about how her dog experiences the world around him. Finally, she came to appreciate the need to play with an open mind and heart when searching with her dog, because you just never know what you’ll encounter. Later that day she sent me a message sharing how much fun she’d had at the search session and how she couldn’t wait to do it again.

The Purpose In Play

Brown sets us up to grasp the properties of play, and Eberle’s wheel of play gives us the experiential ingredients, but what is the purpose of play? Recall that Brown describes one property of play as apparently purposeless. Play is far from purposeless. Play is “the brain building the brain”. Play is rehearsal for the unknown. Play is essential to a thriving existence. Brown says, “the opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is depression.”

While we might not see depression very often in nose work, we do see disconnection. Many people take control of their dogs by leash and move them from point A to B, then tell them to search, then spend the entirety of the search reminding them to search, then they base the success of the search on whether or not they said the right words to a judge and said them faster than the other competitors. It can be difficult to watch a person who is completely disconnected from their dog. Some skilled trainers can get a dog to function pretty well despite a disconnection with the human, but the dogs I’ve observed prefer a human who is truly a partner in the game from the dog’s perspective.

Does nose work have to be play? Obviously not. There are many people who train their dogs to do nose work within a rigid set of rules and they do not allow for deviation from these rules. These people maintain control of the dog, the search area, and the outcome of the search. The dog is commanded by the human to start and stop searching as the human sees fit. The dog only gets to search as long as he performs in the expected way, with the human rejecting any and all communication from the dog that does not fit the expected search behavior. This can all be done in a pleasant manner, but it is not play. Brown makes a distinction between playing and being playful. An adult can be playful with a child as they build a lego spaceship, but if the child keeps wanting to use the legos for something else and the adult compels him to follow the directions and build the ship, leading the child to want to stop the activity and the adult to coerce the child into continuing, then it is not play. A dog and a human could be playful in the way they do nose work, but if the human is in command and control mode and the dog loses agency, it is not play.

You might be wondering, if you don’t teach a child to follow directions or teach a dog to stay on task in a search, how will they ever learn to do it? Brown would caution you to think carefully about your lack of faith in the power of play.

Coach Gary – Brown details the play led by coach Gary Avischious (pages 115-117), as he “teaches” 6-9 year olds how to play hockey in a competitive league. Gary randomly assembles his teams, as opposed to cherry-picking players for their expected abilities at certain positions. He starts his kids off not on the ice, but on rollerblades, skating around town on sidewalks and in parking lots. He takes them to a grassy hill so they can fall and not be afraid of getting hurt on the hard ice. He takes his time observing the kids, learning the personalities, and helping each of them through their struggles. The kids learn to skate around objects and to skate backwards. They do exercises as a group and build connection.

When they eventually step on the ice, they don’t use pucks, instead they use mini footballs, which are silly stand-ins that move unpredictably on the ice, keeping the kids from feeling self-conscious about their passing and shooting skills. When pucks come out, the kids are encouraged to practice passing over and over before shooting on goal.

Coach Gary provides the kids with a safe and trusting environment, where they come to expect only positive feedback from him. When they begin to play games against other teams, they use their skills to have fun and play with lots of energy. Coach Gary focuses on recognizing the personal improvements made by each player, rather than focusing on star players or wins and losses.

Brown includes a detail I think is sadly necessary for western culture to approve of a coach like Gary, when he notes that Gary’s teams have won the league championship 13 out of the past 15 seasons. In my experience, coaches like Gary don’t always end up with winning records. If we measured the kids’ motivation and unselfconsciousness, rather than their record, we’d find that coaches like Gary almost always cultivate a team full of kids having fun, regardless of outcome. I’d love to see more teams and coaches evaluated and celebrated for their love of the game.

Brown concludes the story about Coach Gary with a scene at a restaurant at the end of the season. Gary’s team is in high spirits, laughing and having fun around their table. A nearby team, led by a serious coach in a suit, is seated at their table with sombre looks on their faces. A waiter comes to Gary’s table and asks the team how it felt to win the trophy. They happily tell him they had lost. It turns out, the winning team’s coach was known for being tough, tolerating no silliness, and focusing on skills and drills. Win or lose, Gary’s focus on play ensured that his team would grow in many positive ways and have a great time in the process.

Really think about Coach Gary’s approach. He wants the kids to voluntarily engage in his games, to learn some skills with no self-consciousness, to want to keep playing and playing, and to be improvisational (grassy hills and mini-footballs aren’t what you think when you think “hockey”). When I think about nose work like Coach Gary, I think about a game I call “playing on the playground”, which was designed to “teach” dogs to use their bodies to interact with their environment in many ways that would end up helping them in their searches (like crawling under something, or prairie-dogging, or elevating and moving laterally). Tucker the yellow lab’s human took this game to another level and used a ceramic tile as a touch target, placing it throughout search environments and encouraging Tucker to nose touch it. This is just one way to get a dog and human to prepare for the game of nose work without actually doing nose work. Creativity is usually linked with play. The more creative you can get at “Coach Gary-ing” your nose work practice, the more fun it will be for all!

“I Did It Just For The Heck Of It” – Brown notes, on page 43 of Play that, “with enough play, the brain works better. We feel more optimistic and more creative. We revel in novelties – a new fashion, new car, a new joke. And through our embrace of the new we are attracted to situations that test skills we do not need now, but may need in the future. We find ourselves saying, “I did it just for the heck of it, but it turned out to be good for me.””

The thing about play, is that it widens the net of “skills we don’t need now that might be needed in the future”. Play might seem too costly if all you can think about is what you stand to lose by playing. If I offer you a chance to play a nose work game that involves your dog searching through a school hallway to find the room that you and the target odor are hidden in, and you decline, stating that you don’t want your dog to get confused before an upcoming trial, then you are assigning a cost to the experience. Approaching the experience as play, you give it a go, knowing there is no serious, long-term cost. After going through the experience, you might even recognize that you and your dog learned something – and had fun!

Brown uses Tiger Woods as an example later in his book, when he shares that young Tiger Woods used to toss golf balls up into trees and play them from the random spots in the rough that they would bounce down to. At college, he would go to the driving range and hit balls with extreme slice over the top of a nearby apartment building then back onto the range. At a photo shoot for Nike, while waiting for the crew to set up lighting, Tiger bounced a golf ball on the head of his nine iron 40-50 times, then hit it in mid air. All these things he did because regular golf shots were boring to him. He was playing.

You might say, “Tiger Woods can do that because he’s the greatest golfer alive.” But, how do we know if playing in this way is the result of Tiger being a great golfer, or part of the cause of Tiger’s greatness? Would Tiger still be an amazing golfer if someone had punished him for playing around and limited his golf practice to drives, approach shots, chips and putts? Maybe, but he would be an amazingly bored golfer. What is more important than the quality of Tiger’s experience? Definitely not the label society places on him, or the trophy’s and titles conferred upon him.

A common cry from the play police in nose work is for people to stick to the basics and avoid what some refer to as “sexy” hides (i’m assuming these are the tins and tubes with extra see-through holes in them?! Don’t look – it’s a bare naked q-tip!). While the basics are indeed important, what might be more important is supporting dogs and humans in their desire to seek novelty and explore the ever-changing complexities of the game. A common thread in the fabric of play is the desire to learn the rules, then begin to break them, seeking out new and unexpected synthesis of the concepts of the game and the skills involved. There’s no telling how many people and dogs have missed out on the joy of discovery and advancement because someone discouraged them from exploratory play.

I had a student named Anne (she passed away from cancer) with a 125lb Newfie who mainly played nose work at home and in monthly one-on-one sessions with me. At the beginning of each session Anne would share with me what she’d been doing at home. A typical report would be something like this: “Izzie found every hide I put out as high as I could reach to place them, so I got out the ladder and put one on the ceiling fan.” I’d ask how that went and Anne would sometimes tell me it was easy for Izzie, other times she’d describe Izzie’s endless tenacity to solve the puzzle and she’d confess, “I didn’t think she would ever find it, so I pointed it out to her. Was that ok to do?” I would always encourage Anne to play with Izzie in whatever way felt right – and fun. Izzie was an exceptional searcher with lots of enthusiasm and a love of complex puzzles. Anne was connected to Izzie’s desire to do something other than the simple hides, and that is no different than Tiger Woods wanting to do something other than regular, boring golf shots. The avoidance of failure isn’t the focus, the focus is on fun, challenge, and play. The risk is worth it.

On pages 30,31 of Play, Brown discusses how animals from octopi, to birds, to otters all play, even though it can be quite risky to get playful in the wild. A study of grizzly bears in Alaska showed that the bears who played the most were the ones who survived best. In the game of nose work, the humans who most successfully join their dogs in play will not only get the most out of the experience, but they’ll gift their dogs with the most enriching and joyful experience.

Some of the things I’ve learned about when playing the game of nose work just for the heck of it are:

Dogs and humans can search simultaneously – each looking for their own hidden target – and most dogs find it to be fun, interesting, and totally sensible. This helps us to see that dogs use context with great specificity, such that they can play many versions of nose work without the need for a human to “cue” them.

Dogs can find their way to odor no matter the direction of the wind relative to where they start – they don’t need you to point them to the “search area”, in fact, they might need you to let them move away from the area to get to the area.

Dogs set their own boundaries, and if they need your input, they behave in a particular way to open the conversation.

Dogs can search blindfolded. Humans can, too. Neither one really wants to make it a habit.

When no one present in a search area (not even the coach) knows where the hide is, everyone is filled with endless energy to search and everyone attunes carefully to what the dogs are communicating. I learned this by spinning around in circles with my eyes closed and throwing a hide somewhere in a cluttered room while everyone else waited outside the room. I repeated this many times with many different groups of people.

Dogs like to be teased sometimes. Throw a dog’s toy into a search area, then hide his eyes and go pick up the toy. Once you’re back to the dog, let him loose to search for odor. Pretty much all dogs know you’re teasing them, they don’t hardly spend a moment searching for the toy, but they definitely search for the odor with more enthusiasm. Ron Gaunt would sneakily remove a hide from the area if a dog was playing coy with communicating source, most of the time the dog would pretty directly go investigate the area where the hide had been, as if to say, “okay, you called my bluff. Put the hide back so we can keep playing!”

Random members of the public often have a higher success rate understanding a dog in odor than does the dog’s own human. When I ask a member of the public to tell me what they think a dog is doing, they will say something like, “That dog’s found something.” This is also known as “alert”. Very often, the dog’s own human will remain silent, watching the dog communicate for some time, then watching the dog move on. When asked about what happened, the dog’s human might say, “I wasn’t sure he found the hide. I knew he was working something, but I was waiting for him to tell me he found it.” Curiously, our random member of the public needed no period of deliberation to declare the dog had found the hide. In many ways, competition nose work training actually trains the natural inclination to trust the dog right out of the human.

Most competition nose work humans don’t trust their dogs, they trust that other humans will behave predictably (evidenced when a dog indicates a hide in a broken pen, discarded glove, piece of trash, pile of leaves, etc., and the human won’t call it). Most false alerts arise from the dog attempting to meet the human’s expectation of where a hide should be. The human holds the false belief, the dog just makes it so.

Dogs stand still, quite often when thinking about their next move, and if you can be with them, they will quite often lead you directly to a find or to an important advancement in the search.

When a human leashes her dog and ties the leash around her waist, the dog will search without pulling her over. Our hands, arms, and shoulders are powerful communication tools that can be used to improve clarity and connection, or to cause deep disconnection and opposition.

There are scores of other learning experiences I’ve had when searching with a dog just to see what he wants to tell me, and to see if I understand him. Play is powerful. And fun!

“We Are Built For Play“

The science behind this declaration is beyond the scope of the book, but Brown does reference some of what he and others have discovered about play through research and experimentation. Importantly, from the sea squirt (an organism that goes brain dead if it stops moving) to squirts and bantams (9-11 year old kids playing hockey), movement is an integral part of play. So are our hands. When kids interact with toys and each other, they are moving, using their hands, and fully engaging in play. When kids watch TV, they are passive. fMRI imaging shows how our brains thrive in play learning situations versus passive activities like watching TV.

I love the kind of play in nose work that involves speaking what I see the dog doing, and reflecting back to the dog where I’ve seen him searching (reflecting can include a human moving along the dog’s most recent path and pointing out where the dog was, what his body was doing, where his nose was focused – almost like a dog-driven, human executed, presentation of the search area, with narration). This verbal and physical behavior engages the brain and takes advantage of the lifelong juvenile quality in dogs and humans, sometimes referred to as “neoteny”. If we interact and play with our environment, our brains remain healthy as we age. Why shouldn’t nose work improve your healthspan?!

On pages 61-63 Brown describes how play expressions in two year olds can become highly creative and fulfilling careers, or sublime hobbies and passions in adulthood – if the early play expressions are encouraged. This doesn’t mean you take the toddler who dances to music at the concert in the park and put him in a young Mozart class to teach him to compose symphonies. It just means you celebrate the play expression and encourage the child to play as much as he likes – take him to listen to more live music, dance with him at home, etc.

In nose work, many dogs show a strong desire to play with odor in their environment. They love to check out where it collects, the paths it takes, and the other smells that odor might mingle with. Many people see a dog who does not work efficiently and directly to source as a “distracted dog”. That’s like labeling the two year old who holds his hands up high and opens and closes his fists for 30 seconds as “distracted” from dancing, because he’s not doing the jive or the cha-cha-cha. No one expects the two year old to be a professional dancer. The game of nose work doesn’t need to be full of professional searchers. A dog can fully enjoy playing with odor and become a very successful nose work dog in the future – especially with encouragement from his human. Kade the black lab is an example of encouraging early interest in playing with odor. We gave Kade lots of verbal praise for all of his changes of behavior where odor collected and as he would follow trails of odor. We praised more and more intensely when he became more excited near and at source. We also played a lot of “toss the odor” where he got to search for and retrieve the hide – often in dense grasses and brush. We encouraged and celebrated his every interest in the presence of odor and the movement of odor. This went on for a few years. Today, Kade is one of the most enthusiastic, joyful, playful, and successful nose work dogs I know.

“Play Is A State Of Mind”

We’ve looked at the properties of play, the progression of a play experience, the purpose of play, and the innate desire to play that can be found across the animal kingdom. Science continues to support the claim that play is essential to brain development throughout our lifetime.

What Brown would really like to convey to people is that play is not about definitions, properties, rules, or goals. Play is a state of mind. Brown uses the example of a group of guys who have waited their entire lives to golf at Pebble Beach in California, saying that even though they are there to play golf, they are so ticked off, miserable, and angry, self-critical, competitive, perfectionistic, and pre-occupied with their last double-bogey that they are not playing, nor are they playful. All the ingredients are present for play, yet the mindset of the golfers is the dominating factor.

In the next paragraph, Brown shares a segment of a Runner’s World article, where runners were divided into four types: the exerciser, the competitor, the enthusiast, and the socializer. Brown writes, “The exerciser is someone who runs primarily to lose weight, to stay in shape, to improve cardiovascular fitness. The competitor runs to improve race time, to beat others, to make a PB (personal best). Enthusiasts run to experience the joy of the day, to feel their muscles working and the air on their face. For the socializer, running is primarily an activity to bring people together for talking, which is the real fun.” Brown goes on to say that the enthusiast and the socializer are the types most likely to be at play through running. The other two types are more likely to feel lousy when they don’t meet expectations they have for themselves, which is not really play.

According to Brown, “sometimes running is play, and sometimes it is not. What is the difference between the two? It really depends on the emotions experienced by the runner. Play is a state of mind.”

This is the key to nose play. It is a state of mind. Your mind – your brain – is flexible, and with intent and follow-through, you can create and maintain the state of mind for play.

I aspire to be the most enthusiastic nose play enthusiast I can be. I want to search to experience the joy of the hunt, to feel my senses open as I take in all that I can from an eagerly communicative dog, to light up as the dog and I collect clues to understand the world around us – and each other – through the lens of the search for odor. No anger over a missed hide, no self-criticism for a false call, no preoccupation with the container search gone bad. Just play.

In nosePlay: Part 2 we’ll explore the book Play further, looking at the 8 play personalities as laid out by Brown, and we’ll learn about attunement and different types of play from birth through childhood into adulthood. We’ll look at how work can be play, how we lose our play nature and how to get it back. Finally, we’ll see what Brown has to say about playing together.

Happy Sniffing!