Ok, Slappy the lab and I have been doing this for two months now. He's pretty good at it. When we visit friends I hand his odor can to someone and tell them to hide it and he can sniff it out in like two minutes or less almost every time. Even if it's somewhere weird like in the oven or someone's pocket.
So it's a cool party trick. But...that's it. Even if he does it five times in a row, it's just a quick little cool thing he can do. Like I can balance a chair on my chin, that's a cool party trick too. But I'm not tired or anything afterwards.
In the last two months I have seen people recommend nosework for basically everything. Got a hyper dog? Nervous dog? Aggressive dog? Reactive dog? Does your dog have too much energy? Does your dog need a job where they can really use their brain? Nosework supposed to help with anxiety and reactivity and being destructive in the house. It's great for dogs that got hurt and need to rest but are bored because they have to rest. If your dog is reactive and gets too worked up on walks then instead of going on walks you should just stay home and do nosework instead and that will be way better for him.
And I just don't get it. It takes him less than two minutes to find the thing even in an apartment where he's never been before. It seems like the level of difficulty of playing a game of tic-tac-toe. I'll play that to pass the time and it will work my brain a little, but working my brain a little for 90 seconds isn't anything like taking a hike or playing a game of ultimate frisbee or building a Lego set or doing an actual job.
I get that people do competitions for this and that's why their so crazy about it. I just feel like it's way oversold to the uninitiated. I'm not seeing the "ultimate brainwork" aspect, at least on my dog.