We started with a threshold exercise where the hide alternates from side to side each search. We want the dogs to learnt o slow down and search the threshold before moving on into the room. I was surprised that most of the dogs were tricked by lingering odor when the hide was placed on the other side of the doorway. Many even gave false alerts. Porter and I will work a lot of these kinds of hides this months since they are common placements in trial.
Corners were next. It was interesting to see how the dogs approached the corners. Of course Porter marched to his own drum and approached in a totally different way :) but he still found the hide without a problem.
Later we worked an exterior search and several dogs before Porter were distracted by pee spots. The good thing is we are starting to be able to read pee sniffing versus searching more now. With Porter, he lingers and holds his head still, compared to the constant movement when he's in odor. A dog who ran right before us ended up peeing in the search area, very close to the hide, so Porter's run was paired with food. This helped him focus on his search and not read the pee-mail or think of marking. He did great :)
A second exterior search was about 3-4 feet up on a flag pole. Porter dashed into the search area, past the pole, slightly out of bounds, caught odor, and chased it back to the pole. I was very proud.
After hearing so much about the Running Bunny exercise and watching video clips on it, Porter and I got a chance to play the game as well. But it is harder than it looks. I wanted to be quick with the rewards so after finding a hide and moving on I would reach into my bait bag to grab more treats. This focused Porter on me and caused him to pass a couple of hides. I'll need to work on either being sneakier when reloading or holding a lot more treats in my hand so they will last me the whole run. This is a good exercise and I will be adding it to my classes. It really helped one dog who is an aggressive alerter and is starting to scratch up cars.
We all brought a variety of objects from home and practiced our container searches. This is a little more advanced than we need for NW1 but is still great practice.
The first hide was in my daughter's boot laid on it's side with the opening facing the outside of the search area. You could see with this exercise how if the dog does not pass by the boot on the outside he could easily not catch the odor. So we need to be mindful of our dog's movement and be sure they get to all the corners and edges, especially if they have not found odor yet.
The end of our container searches added the additional difficulty of distractions. One box has leashes and dog toys, another dog food in a bag and a fast food wrapper, a third has expo markers, another was an empty dog treat container, and so on. Some dogs were interested in the boxes and even gave weak fasle alerts. Porter didn't seem to notice, even though I guided him past the food distraction a couple of times. I wanted to be sure he knew the box was there but just didn't care, and even though he didn't check it out, I still can't be sure he noticed it and dismissed it. But we won't work on this more until after we get our NW1 title.
The last two searches of the day were blind hides. One was an interior that contained a lot of chairs and corners. Porter and I didn't properly pass the threshold so we had to come back and do it again. In a trial the threshold will be clearly marked, so I shouldn't make that mistake again. But the good side is he dragging me off to the left quickly because that was where the hide was :) He wasn't the fastest dog on that search but I did properly call alert around 15 seconds.
Last was another container search (with the distractions still out). The hide was in the spout of a watering can. It was near the front, but all the dog (but one) blew right past it without noticing it at all. Once Porter came back around he found it but I do want to work on him catching the odor sooner. I do not think I was holding him at the start line as long as I usually do to give him a change to catch his bearings. So in trial, I'll need to remember to relax and count to 10 before releasing him.
Overall it was an awesome workshop and helped get some of my nerves out. Porter did amazing, both with his searches and with chilling during his down time. I think he's ready for competition. If we blow it, it'll be my fault. So I need to relax, take a breath, trust my dog, and above all, have fun!
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| Porter after a day of K9 Nose Work (R) |
1 comment:
Sounds like fun!
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