A workbook is an instrument for anyone who wants to learn about a particular subject. It contains within a series of instructions and exercises intended to walk you through what you want to learn.

It’s a way to pick up a new skill on your own, without the presence of a teacher. A workbook allows for a certain kind of intellectual independence: like you are figuring something out, but you also have a guide without being overwhelmed by someone imparting a lesson.

A workbook allows you to pace your own learning, to read and move through the exercises as quickly or as slowly as you want. You can go back and start over any time if something you are learning needs to be digested, reconsidered or analyzed.

Workbooks have a way of involving you in a way you wouldn’t be when someone is teaching you something - you are immersed in your own process, rather than someone talking at you.

Because of this involvement workbooks make you think, invite you to make the process your own, and respect the inherent intimacy of whatever you want to learn about.\

Workbooks

Foundation Skills Workbook	Basics of Scent Detection Workbook	Creating a Persistent Alert Workbook	Advanced Scent Detection Workbook
Foundational skills are the fundamental, portable skills that are essential to conveying and receiving information that is critical to training and real-world success. These skills are fundamental in that they serve as a basis—the foundation—for supporting additional behaviors/tasks and learning. They are portable because, rather than being task specific, they can be applied at some level across a wide variety of behaviors.	The ways we relate to dogs continues to evolve over time, and we still have much to learn about canine olfactory science. From the first domesticated dog, humans and dogs have evolved together. Originally, dogs helped humans in tracking and hunting game. More and more, dogs and their incredible noses are being trained to detect everything from viruses, blood sugar, histamine levels and many many environmental toxins and agricultural diseases.	Searching itself is just a behavior chain. There is a start and an end. In this case the cue to search begins the chain and the Alert ends the chain. However, there are many steps in between. A savvy handler has the ability to read these steps and to understand what he or she is seeing. This is a skill like any other and is a critical skill in learning how to handle the dog during the training. The final step of a successful search is the dog letting YOU know that he found the odor.  That final step is, in my opinion, just as important as finding the odor to begin with.	The most important thing we teach our dogs is commitment to the scent.  This means the dog is reliable enough that we can trust them when they tell us that the odor is present despite what else might be happening. Opposite of that is trusting that if the dog is not alerting, that the odor is not present. Missing the odor due to lack of commitment or falsely alerting to the presence of the odor can cause many problems in the medical alert field, the least of which is a visit to the ER.