Mantrailing and Scentwork in Cumbria: Wholesome Things to Do With Your Dog
A day of scentwork and mantrailing in Cumbria with Paddaburn
If you’ve been on the lookout for a new way to spend quality time with your dog, then I may just have the suggestion you didn’t know you needed. This summer - which feels so far away now - I spent a whole day photographing dogs in Cumbria doing what they excel at: using their noses. Both activities are ones I’d been extremely curious about for quite some time, so photographing the dogs in action down in Bowness-On-Solway allowed me to gain a unique perspective of the whole activity (mostly because I was lying on the ground or in a bush, what’s new!).
Look how much fun Pepperoni is having mantrailing!
If you haven’t come across mantrailing or scentwork before, both are exceptional forms of enrichment for dogs, and Caroline Johnson at Paddaburn in Cumbria is an exceptional trainer. She put it best (I paraphrase, forgive me) they’re the only activities you can do with your dog where they are calling the shots and making all the decisions. This is why it does absolute wonders for a dog’s confidence levels, and so many reactive & shy dogs excel in it because they feel secure and empowered.
Scentwork (aka scentsports, nosework etc.) is all about teaching a dog to trace a specific scent hidden within a search area. Mantrailing is where a dog has to follow the trail of a particular person, sometimes across large search areas, around walls and obstacles, or sometimes - as our move to the beach in the afternoon proved - across large open spaces. Both are absolutely mindblowing to watch (and for me, to photograph) because of the laser focus of the dog and in particular the ‘aha’ moment when they indicate they’ve found the item/person they were searching for.
A Warm and Welcoming Cumbrian Dog Sports Community
As someone who only fairly recently moved to the area, I have been looking for a community of people who I could share my love of dogs with. I meet so many dog owners while doing my job, which I adore, but it’s an additional extra bonus for me to share the love and bond I have for my own dog with other people too. None of my dogs come on client shoots with me, for obvious reasons, so it’s lovely to be able to share them with others through a shared interest.
I met such a wonderfully welcoming group of dog lovers who all absolutely love these pastimes, who celebrate each other’s successes and each other’s dogs so openly. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I took the plunge and started things up with my own dog, Scout.
Hapi, a deaf-blind angel, is exceptional at scentwork. He is also the first deaf-blind dog in the world to pass the Mantrailing Global Level 1 Assessment
After the workshops, I put together a gallery of images from the day for participants to choose from if they’d like to purchase any, and to my delight the images went down a storm. I realised after taking Scout to her first mantrailing class (and seeing how well she took to it right away) how important it is to have these types of images of your dog: you just can’t take them yourself because you’re handling them!
Mantrailing and Scentwork Classes with my Border Collie
By the end of the afternoon, I couldn’t stop myself thinking about how much Scout would absolutely love to try both scentwork and mantrailing. She’s my eldest of 4 dogs, a 7-year-old border collie, and she’s as sharp as a tack. I do credit her with a fantastic off-switch, but as you can imagine she absolutely loves to work. She’s never formally done agility, although she’s trained informally on jumps, turns, directions etc., and she’s spent her whole life as my chief photography model (yes that’s a thing!).
Scout is also incredibly nervous, sound sensitive, and dog selective: we manage this incredibly well. Nevertheless, I’m always happy to try anything positive and encouraging for her as a means to raise her confidence levels. Despite constantly telling myself otherwise, she’s not getting any younger either, so any activity that she can keep doing well into her senior years is always going to be welcome. Mantrailing and scentwork presented themselves as the perfect outlet for her.
We booked onto our first mantrailing workshop with Caroline at Paddaburn, which happened to take place in our home village near Brampton: I thought this would be a soft landing for Scout to start out and I was delighted to be proven correct! The first time she was asked to trail a scent, I was simply amazed by how quickly she a) worked out what was expected of her and b) succeeded in finding the person she was trailing.
Her resilience was put to the test when on our third trail, she was distracted by an off-lead dog (important to note: not a dog belonging to a member of the class). Scout seeing it walk past freely with its owners frustrated the heck of her, and she started bouncing to the end of the lead. However, I was able to get her back from that and focus her back on the trail in record speed - she really locked back in so fast, I was in awe.
Trying Out Scentwork at Lanercost
I just knew that class was never going to be enough, so the following week, I took Scout for her first scentsports workshop in and around Lanercost and Hadrian’s Wall. This was a lot more concentrated searching in smaller areas than mantrailing, and for her first session I just brought Scout’s kibble as she always works for it and has such a high drive for her everyday food.
There’s a lot for the handler to think about with scentwork too, in terms of where to stand in relation to your dog, how to keep them focused on the task and how to direct them without leading them to the answers. That’s an aspect of it that I am really looking forward to working on and improving in future classes for sure: Scout’s a natural, it’s me that needs more training!
Caroline is so unbelievably encouraging and complimentary, even when you (the human) are not getting something quite right or could be doing something a lot better, I can wholeheartedly recommend enrolling you and your dog in one of her classes to see for yourself. For instance, when Scout broke off her trail and reacted to the off-lead dog, I was calm on the exterior despite internally thinking, “Oh nooo”, but Caroline made no big deal of it, encouraged me to get her back on track and she did so exceptionally quickly. Do not fear your dog being themselves and having a wobble: it happens to ALL of us!
Mocha the Boxer on the scent during a scentwork workshop with Paddaburn.
Looking for Things to Do with Your Dog in Cumbria?
Looking for something different to do with your dog in Cumbria? Mantrailing and scentwork - particularly with Paddaburn - are well worth a try. Both pastimes suit all ages of dogs, and are a low-impact way to tire out and fulfil a busy mind. Caroline runs her workshops one dog at a time in a turn-taking structure, which means there is no chaos and no loose dogs around each other. All participants are so respectful of each other and each other’s dogs, and I’ve only ever witnessed positive handling - much to my delight.
If you’d like to learn more about Paddaburn’s classes and schedule you can check out Caroline’s website and events here, as well as the Paddaburn Facebook Page.
What’s Next for Us
I am photographing for Paddaburn again on Sunday October 18th and there’s also word of a Christmas special event so keep your eyes peeled there!
As for our new found hobby, I’ve kept up practising Scout’s scentwork with her own kibble in our own time, and I’m looking forward to signing up for more classes in October and November. I wish I could join my own session on the 18th as I’d love to have some photographs of her doing her thing!
Maybe I’ll see you out on the trail soon?