02-22-2009

Duece's visit to the vet hardly slowed him down and he had to be told to ease up a bit while playing with Ziva.

Yesterday we set up a training session as we learned on the e-training for dogs webinar. At first we set up with bone which Duece has never been introduced to. He didn't show any interest in it at all. I'm thinking it could be due to the bone stored in the cold and we were doing our session in the cold garage. Or it could have been due to our impatience and not giving him enough time to get his nose into the scratch box. We then switched to material he was familiar with and he was hitting on it quickly.

One of the main things we learned was to have the dog's handler (me) stay out of the training and have someone else reward Duece for finding the scent. The reason is to have the dog 'hunt' the scent without depending on the handler for anything. When we started Duece came to me looking for instructions and I had to ignore him and as a normal curious dog, he sniffed around and things worked out.

We put three scratch boxes on the floor and when Duece's nose went to the hole in the box, he was told "Good" and rewarded with a treat. He was a little confused as I'm the one usually treating him but he did things just like we were told it would work. I moved the boxes around when it seemed like Duece was just going to stand in one place and dip his head to the scent and get his reward. The dipping is a good thing but we also want him to 'hunt' for the scent as well.






The first video gives an idea how it is supposed to work. The next video shows how Duece is supposed to do his 'hunt.' We also want him to sit at the source and he is starting to do it. The video is right after we moved the boxes around.





Today we set up for a short session and this time I dropped a little hot water on the bone before we started. This seemed to work and Duece was dipping his nose on the right box and getting his treat. We were happy that he was working with the bone and neglected to move the box quick enough because Duece decided to save time and he went into a 'down' and rested his head on the box with his nose over the hole. We are going to have to work with the bone a lot more to really feel comfortable with it.