Odour Tiers
Any odour. Any tier. The same honest search every time.
DDT competes on a wider range of odours than any other detection sport. From birch oil to explosives, conservation to cadaver, narcotics to bedbugs — if your dog is trained on it, you can trial on it. The tier system exists for one reason. To make sure every search is fair, regardless of what is hidden inside it.
Why Tiers Exist
Not all odours behave the same way in a search environment. Some travel readily through a space, giving a trained dog a strong and detectable plume to work from. Others are far more subtle. The scent signature is weaker, the plume smaller, and the dog has to work harder and closer to find it.
Extra time is not a reward for working a particular odour. It is a recognition of what the nose is being asked to do. Some odours ask more of a dog than others and the search time reflects that.
What the extra time does not change is how the work is judged. The nine categories see exactly the same things at every tier. The quality of the search. The decisions made inside it. How the team moved and read and responded together. The standard is identical regardless of what is hidden. The clock adjusts. The measure never does.
Tier 1
Tier 1 runs at standard search time. Five minutes at Preliminary and Novice, eight minutes at Intermediate and Advanced. These are strong, well-travelling odours that fill a search environment readily and give a trained dog a clear plume to work from. The search asks everything of your team regardless of what tier is hidden inside it.
Birch Oil. Gun Oil. Clove. Anise. Cannabis. Pseudo. Scentlogix.
Tier 2
Tier 2 adds two minutes to the standard search time. The odours in this tier carry a subtler scent signature. The plume is smaller, the dog works closer to source, and the search asks more of the nose to get there. The extra time reflects what the dog is being asked to do. How the team works inside that time is judged exactly the same way it always is.
Kong. Conservation Type 1. Tobacco. Narcotics Type 1. HR/Cadaver. Petrol. Explosives Type 1.
Tier 3
Tier 3 adds four minutes to the standard search time. These are the most subtle odours in the sport. The scent signature is faint, the plume demands real precision from the dog to locate and commit to, and the search leaves nothing in reserve. The extra time is there because the nose needs it. The judgment of the work remains unchanged.
Pyrotechnics. Conservation Type 2. Digital Hardware/Sim. Narcotics Type 2. Cash. Bedbugs. Explosives Type 2.
Competing Across Tiers
Every team in a division shares the same search area and the same hides. What the tier changes is the maximum time available to complete it. A Tier 1 team works to the standard maximum. A Tier 2 team has two additional minutes available. A Tier 3 team has four. The search is identical. The ceiling adjusts to reflect what the nose is being asked to work with.
This is DDT's commitment to fairness across every odour it recognises. No team is disadvantaged because of what their dog is trained on. No odour is treated as less worthy of a genuine opportunity to show what a trained dog can do with it. The search area is level. The time makes sure it stays that way.
Growing the List
The odours recognised by DDT are not fixed. The sport was built to reflect the full breadth of what detection dogs do in the real world, and that world keeps expanding. New odours are added as the sport grows, as training communities develop, and as the work takes teams into new areas of detection.
If you work an odour that is not yet on the tier list, reach out. DDT is always listening to what its community is working on and where the sport should go next.
Email info@detectiondogtrials.com to enquire.