WeSmellBetter Packs – what are they?

If you are logged in to WeSmellBetter with a free account, you have access to “My Dogs” and “My Packs” under the My Stuff menu.

What is “My Dogs”

“My Dogs” is important. “My Dogs” is used in a variety of drop-down menus throughout the rest of the site for reporting and for tracking trial entries and NQs. It is intended to include the dogs that you own. We do no verification of MyDogs — 1000 different people could all include “AB1234567 Bowser the Beautiful” in their MyDogs list; any trial entries or NQs they create for Bowser are private to their own account and no one else can see them.

What is a Pack?

A Pack is a user-defined grouping of dogs within our database. (The database includes any dog that has had a qualifying score published in Scent Work trial results by the AKC).

There are four types of Packs:

My Packs

My Packs are Private packs, an informal grouping of dogs that you define and that only you can see. Why would you create a My Pack group? That’s up to you! Maybe that’s where you track your friend’s dog because she never remembers what classes she needs when it’s time for a move-up and now with a couple of clicks you can quickly bring up her dog’s Titles and Qs report. Maybe you’re in hot pursuit of a particular title and want to easily see recent results for the other three top contenders for the honors, you could put them all in a My Pack that you create and no one would be the wiser that you are keeping track. Only you can add or remove dogs from your My Packs.

Team Packs

A Team Pack is intended to be a publicly-available informal grouping of dogs within the database. Perhaps it’s a group that trains together, or takes classes together or of dogs across the country that are all from the breeder. All users can see the members of a Team Pack and can run reports for the members. You can Join Existing Team Packs as a user but then will need to add your dogs to it, too. Anybody can join a Team Pack and anyone that has joined can add and remove dogs — we’re assuming everybody is going to play nicely.

Club Packs

A Club Pack is intended to be a way for you to group members of your AKC-affiliated club. Any club that has ever held a Scent Work trial is available from the drop-down selection list for creation of a Club Pack. There can only be one Club Pack for each of those Clubs. All users can see the members of a Club Pack and can run reports for the members. You can join existing Club Packs as a user but then will need to add your dogs to it, too, and, of course, you can also add the dogs of other club members. Anybody can join a Club Pack — we have no way of knowing whether your membership is current! — and anyone that has joined can add and remove dogs — we’re assuming everybody is going to play nicely.

It’s really important to understand that Users are responsible for maintaining the “membership” for Packs, whether they are private or public — WeSmellBetter has no way to know who your members are!

What can I do with defined Packs?

A variety of reports are available under the Packs sub-menu. You can run these for any Pack that you, as a user, have joined — your private My Packs, Teams or Club packs. These include

Pack Titles & Qs – Lists Qs, Titles and Designations for each Pack Member by year or for all years.
Pack Qualifying Runs – Lists all Qs for each Pack Member for a specific month or year in a downloadable .csv file for integration into your recordkeeping
New Titles By Pack – Lists new titles and Designations earned by any Pack Member during a month or year
First Titles By Pack – Lists Pack Members in order of titles and Designations earned (what many consider to be chronological “ranking”)
Titles Earned – Lists how many Pack Members have earned each title and Designation
Most Titles – Lists Pack Members in order of the total number of titles and Designations earned
Most Qualifying Legs – Lists Pack Members in order of how many Qs they’ve earned
Most Fastest In Trial – Lists Pack Members in order of FIT*s earned
Points Rankings Report – Applies user-defined Ranking Systems to Pack Members. Ranking systems are created under the My Stuff menu and any that are classified as “public” may be applied to any Pack (or Breed or My Dogs list, or All Dogs).
Run Time Rankings Report – Applies the Run Time Ranking System to Pack Members. This is a pre-defined Ranking System that is not user-editable.

There are a few reports that can be run by any user, whether they are a member or not, for Club Packs. Those are under the Clubs menu:

Club Qualifying Runs – Lists all Qs for each dog associated with the Club Pack during a month or year. Lists all Qs for each Pack Member for a specific month or year in a downloadable .csv file for integration into your recordkeeping
New Titles By Club — Lists new titles and Designations earned by any dog associated with the Club Pack during a month or year
Most Fastest In Trial – Lists dogs associated with the Club Pack in order of FIT*s earned