I have joined yet another dog team with Spryte, this one is the Ready, Scent, Go! scent hurdle racing team. Kelly had approached me in the fall, wanting to break away from our current team and form a new one. I didn't want to switch Strider because our old team is small and they need him to run. But I figured that for Spryte, a new team would be a great idea. So here we are in January and our new team is formed!
We had our first practise on Sunday and it went pretty well. We didn't have much of a plan since we had no idea who was where in their training. After a few minutes it became pretty obvious that we have people at all different stages of training. So we left most of the scent work for homework and worked on racing skills. We did things like restrained recalls over the jumps (always a favourite of the dogs!), passing drills to get the dogs used to having another dog approach them at speed. We did two lane recalls, to help the dogs get used to another dog running in the next lane. It was all a great success and everyone left with big smiles on their faces. I'm sure the next practise will be just as high energy for all the dogs and people.
Most of the scent work really has to been done at home. Its hard to incorporate the dumbbell work and the jumps until the dogs know how to find the right dumbbell. So Spryte and I have been working on scent discrimination with 4 wooden dumbbells. I have been using the tie down method because I find the dog doesn't become dependent on their owner for help. With a lot of other methods the dogs are waiting for the owner to click or cheer when they approach the right dumbbell. So the dogs are not smelling so much as just going from dumbbell to dumbbell waiting for the owner to acknowledge the correct one.
Where with the tie down method, the owners shouldn't say a word. Basically you let the dog smell the dumbbells (starting with two, one scented, one not and then working up to more dumbbells), and they will likely try and pick up the unscented one which is tied to the board. When they realise they can't bring that one, they try the other one that is scented and because that one is loose they can retrieve it. I just stand their quietly letting the dog think about why one can be retrieved and why one can't. It doesn't take too long before the dog clues in that the one that smells like mom is the one that can be retrieved. Then you will see the dogs actually smelling the dumbbells, instead of just randomly grabbing them.
Sometimes you will get dogs that don't smell but instead just go from dumbbell to dumbbell bumping them to see which one is loose. I believe this is just a phase that the dogs go through and with a bit of patience they start to use their noses.
So up until yesterday the dumbbells have been tied down for Spryte. She would mouth/bump all of them while smelling, before choosing the correct one. I was trying to figure out if she was actually smelling them or bumping them to find the loose one. Well the only way to do that was to cut the strings and see what happens. I am thrilled to say that with the four loose wooden dumbbells, 3 blanks and one scented, she found the right one every time. What a great girl! So she was in fact smelling them and working on scent discrimination.
The next step will be to have them scented by other people and have them loose. Will she be able to discriminate my scent out of other fresh scents? Right now she is mostly finding the fresh scent, not necessarily my scent. So that will be our next step. I'm looking forward to seeing how she does with this new challenge!
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