When air scenting dogs are searching for the target scent in general rather than trying to follow a trail. They often work off-line, although this will depend on the setting and the dog.

Our dogs often perform scent-specific air scent where they are given a scent article from the subject and asked to find that scent. If a scent article is not available, they can be prompted to find all people in the search area.

Air scent is also used to find articles that a subject has handled, as well as human remains.

Each dog has a behavior that they perform when they have found the subject or target article; this is called the “trained final response”. If they find the target when working farther from the handler, they also have a “refind” behavior, which alerts the handler that they have made a find.