Originally Posted by Heathpack

I started Puppy Love on Nosework last week. It’s a dogsport based on the training you’d give a drug or bomb sniffing dog but instead you train them to search for and detect one of four standardized essential oils.

So I was reading about sniffer dogs and learned about the different types of professional for-pay sniffer dogs and started wondering if maybe Puppy Love could earn some Benjamins towards her upkeep.

Bomb detection no way. Drug sniffing no way. Search and rescue? Well she could get into small spaces but I don’t want her crushed by rubble. So, no. Truffles? Hmm moving to France might be ok. But probably all the good truffle territory is claimed already.

Then I read about bedbug sniffing dogs. They make $325 per hour. Seems pretty safe, hotels and apartments. I like this idea.

We’re pretty far from doing anything useful, though. All we’re training so far is searching behavior. Looking in boxes to see if there’s something good. Later you pair the searching with scent, which is apparently the easy part. Realistically we’ll probably just do the sport recreationally. But the idea of funding an early retirement with bed bug sniffing is real.