02-16-2009

Today I put the pill bottle/zip-lock under the snow in a planter in the yard. The planter is in an area where snow is piled up with the snow blade on the UTV so I was able to walk along the snow banks and make decoy holes. Even though the scent was in the planter Duece has become accustomed to finding scent in snow banks and I want to expose him to different kinds of hides.

Duece tried on his orange vest for the first time today. He is quite a bit smaller than Mattie who wore the vest before. We use the vest to let the dog know we are going to work. Duece was so excited about getting to work I cold barely get him to come to me so I could give the search command even though it probably wasn't needed. Gotta keep things consistent!

Duece doesn't have 'search pattern' that I can see, but right now I'm happy that he wants to search. He does clue off of my position to a point, but he lets his memory and his nose be his guide and that's what we want. I've been told to keep my mouth shut and my hands in my pockets by those with a lot more experience than I have so I don't try to influence him except when I know he's checking for rabbit droppings instead of working.

Duece was sticking his nose, clear up to his eyes, in the holes in the snow as he was working his way along the snow bank. Once he got down wind of the planter, he continued to look for holes in the snow, but was able to turn and climb up a snowbank and get into the planter where praise and teasing with the container kept him excited for awhile.

Last week had I wedged the scent container in the bracket for the spare tire on a trailer. It was fun watching Duece as he got into the scent cone and him looking for a hole in the snow. He moved around a bit and finally stuck his head between the rail and the trailer bed and attempted to climb up on the trailer. He was almost perfectly downwind of the hide and I used my hand to hold his rear paw so he could climb up on the trailer. With some encouragement and lots of praise he was pretty excited about finding it.

Today, I finally talked him into going into the house so I could re-hide the scent container as he wanted to stay out and search some more. This time I hid the container in some bricks and then walked around some areas so he hopefully isn't using my tracks to lead him to the scent. It was breezy today so I was hoping to see him do a hard turn into the scent as we were downwind but he didn't. I just let him do his thing and I walked an easy circle through the yard as he checked out different areas. A couple times I repeated the search command as he seemed to be paying too much attention to rabbit droppings. He was checking out an area around the hiding spot and his body language indicated he was interested and he continued on and turned back, giving a neon sign type of indication that is neat to watch.