What to listen for:
Our hosts, Robin Greubel, Stacy Barnett, and Crystal Wing, break down how time, airflow, and placement reshape detection dog work!
They kick things off by describing a week of hides left up to 96 hours, the longest-out scenario that reveals how odor pools migrate and change. Drawing from this experience, our hosts brainstorm creative ways to design hides that can better help your dog read scents.
Central is the concept of "odor availability", which explains why surface area, sealing, and enclosure control whether a source itself (and not merely source size) ever presents to a dog.
Using a paint-flow metaphor, they explain how multiple sources age and send "tendrils" of scent through a structure, forcing dogs to sort overlapping plumes to find dominant streams.
They stress that short-set hides (minutes) produce different search behaviors than long-set hides (days), and that sport trials, which run many teams, may not reflect operational realities.
Robin, Stacy, and Crystal urge handlers to read odor-pool cues, practice sourcing through mixed plumes, and intentionally vary hide age and intensity so dogs learn robust, transferable detection skills across environments.
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