My dog is a 4-month old Brittany. What kind of games can I imagine to help conduct some scent-training to exercise his nose?
I thought about hiding objects with some treats inside, or setting up many small boxes, only one would have something inside.
Any better ideas?
I've read this one on a book and worked great with my 5 months old Boston Terrier:
1 - Get some boiled or baked chicken (could be any kind of meat your dog likes, which in our case is anything). Cut it in small pieces.
2 - Show one piece to the dog, let him smell it, but not eat it.
3 - Leave it on the floor next to him.
4 - Get another piece, let him smell it and leave it one feet away.
5 - Continue increasing the distance and once he gets a hang of the game you can start putting the meat in hidden places or other rooms. Make sure you put the meat in places where your dog can find it, but if he fails help him by guiding him to where the meat is so he doesn't get frustrated with the game.
After the first time I played this game with my dog, he learned to search for anything that I would give him to smell and then hide away. Hope it helps.
Here is one nice video showing how to train scent discrimination with clicker training - shaping.
In addition to what is shown in the video, I quickly realised that holding 2 objects in your hands, the clicker, fetching rewards, not to mention adding more objects is quite difficult. So in the first part of the training, holding just one object I progressively started to put the object on the floor, first with my hand next to it and then the object alone on the floor. When the dog is reliably touching with his nose I moved to 2 objects.
