Tuesday, October 27, 2009

10-27-2009

We've been working a little off and on while keeping Duece interested. Yesterday, after Joker worked a trail, our trail runner gloved up and hid some scent for Duece. Duece has been getting a lot better in the traveling department. It takes some bribery (and pleading) to get him to climb into the suburban on his own, but once he gets in he does okay. Even when left in the suburban for awhile.

The scent was hidden in a grill in a park, one of those heavy duty things that are cemented in the ground. It was getting dark and there was a lot of traffic around the park so we didn't let the scent sit long enough to establish much of a scent cone. He did work it pretty good and the light breeze took the scent to a picnic table and Duece barely slowed down and jumped up on the table. He sniffed around it and then did his indication while on top of the picnic table. I asked him to 'show me' and he worked his way over to the grill and when I got him really excited about "show me" he jumped up on the grill and stuck his nose down into the grate. It was really funny and he got his reward and a bunch of praise.

Today we got out the PVC pipe garden to start proofing Duece from indicating on food/treats. His favorite search treat is bologna and he passed right by another treat but did an indication on a piece of bologna. He got a little correction and went on to the correct PVC pipe. We did about 5 more of these and he's starting to ignore the food/treat. It's going to take some more work especially since Duece doesn't like the PVC pipes and would rather run around and search. I guess that means we'll have to leave some food/treats out in his search area until he learns to ignore those distractions.

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