Success in Buried: Part 2 - Training for Buried

This article is part two of a two-part series on buried hides. Last month, part one , How Sand and Water Impact the Odor Picture, discussed how odor behaves in sand and water. In Part Two, I want to show you how to train for those pictures so your team is more successful.

To make this easier to understand, I break buried training into two parts:

• Building odor skills without buried tubs
  

• Training with tubs so your dog learns the specific pictures of sand and water
  

Both matter. When they work together, dogs become much more fluent in this element.

1. Build Odor Skills Without Buried Boxes

Training in rain, snowmelt, heat, shade, and wind is not buried practice, but it develops the same odor-reading skills buried depends on.

In wet conditions, odor often travels low and along surfaces instead of lifting, clinging and spreading away from source. In hot, dry conditions, odor releases quickly and spreads farther than expected, creating large odor clouds that can feel convincing without actually indicating source.

Airflow adds another layer by pushing odor away from source, redirecting it, or causing it to collect and pool in locations that are not where the hide is placed.

Buried tubs simply recreate those same behaviors in a smaller, more concentrated space. Water tubs mirror what happens when odor hitches a ride with moisture and spreads outward as it evaporates. Dry sand creates the same broad, diffuse odor picture you see on hot, dry days. Airflow within a buried setup can push odor past multiple tubs and end up inside a cold tub at the other end of the search area.

When you build these skills outside of buried, you are giving your dog the tools they need for the element itself. The tubs are different, but the odor behavior is familiar.

2. Train With Tubs

Once you add tubs, additional challenges appear because buried hides are inaccessible. Dogs must read odor as it escapes, not as it exists inside the box.

What adds to the difficulty is that inaccessibility looks different in sand than it does in water. In sand, odor is filtered and slowed as it works its way out of the medium, which can make source harder to define. In water, odor is released and redistributed through evaporation, often creating very strong secondary odor locations away from source.

Dogs that default to calling the strongest concentration of odor may feel confident making a decision before they have truly identified where odor is actively escaping.

Teach Source Versus Strong Odor

One of the biggest challenges in buried is that odor often collects on handles, edges, or nearby tubs. The first strong hit is not always the correct call. Dogs must learn to search for the place where odor is actively escaping, not where it has simply pooled.

You can train this by intentionally creating situations where odor moves, settles, and concentrates away from source:

• Place a sand tub with odor beside a water tub without odor
  

• Place a water tub with odor near blank tubs and allow evaporation to spread odor
  

• Put tubs out early so odor has time to drift and settle away from source
  

• Use airflow (natural or a fan) to push odor past the source and into other tubs or nearby surfaces

When dogs encounter these pictures, they learn that rushing to the first strong hit often leads to mistakes. Instead, they slow down, gather more information, and solve the problem. That skill carries directly into trial buried searches, where pooling, trapping, and redirected odor are common.

Help Your Dog Build Upper-Level Patience

As teams move into higher levels, buried often requires more processing time. Dogs may pause, leave the tub, return, re-sample, or appear unsure. This is a normal part of the problem-solving process.

Handlers must slow down too. Calling alert too early often leads to incorrect calls because the dog has not yet resolved the difference between pooled odor and source odor. Give them the moment they need. Many dogs will sort it out and then commit cleanly.

Teach Over-the-Top Work

Because odor collects on handles and edges, over-the-top work is essential. When a dog brings their nose over the top of the tub, the picture is cleaner and more reliable.

To build this:

• Reward natural over-the-top investigation
  

• When your dog hovers on the edge, wait and let them think
  

• Reward when they shift toward the center, even before a full alert

It’s Not “Just Tubs of Sand and Water”

The joke with buried is that it is “just tubs filled with sand and water.” When you look at it that way, it can feel simple or even dismissible. But once you start to understand how sand and water change odor behavior, and what happens when you put multiple tubs together in one space, it becomes clear that buried creates its own unique puzzles.

Odor is slowed, spread, trapped, redirected, and sometimes concentrated away from source. That complexity is why the skills matter, and why patience matters. Teaching your dog how to work through those pictures, and giving them the time to do so, especially at higher levels, is what ultimately leads to success in this element.

If you would like help designing buried setups for your dog or want to host a workshop in your area, feel free to reach out. I am always happy to help teams take the frustration out of this element.