When we walked into the class and saw all of this stuff out I knew we were all going to have some fun! Tim and Skip knew all about the game of Nosework when it meant looking for treats in boxes and they really get excited when they see the boxes come out at our house. So this is called "upping the criteria". Now that the dogs in class all were very familiar with boxes around it was time for them to learn that "the place where a treat (or odor) could be hiding for them to find is endless!"
This is what we saw when we walked in the facility that day.
 |
| The find was still in a box but there were so many things to check out in between! |
 |
| Even this hand was one of the novel items. |
 |
| Skip working |
 |
| Wow this makes Skip have to really get working.... |
Skip loves this game!
So of course we have to practice during the week so here are a few videos of us doing our own novel thing hides and finds. Now we are using food inside a container with holes in it which raises the criteria a little more as it is harder to smell what is inside. Tim, unlike Skip, is worried to stay with the raised box so that is why I took it off the chair to reward him for finding it. At first I rewarded him away from the box (wrong on my part) so then I remembered to put the box down on the ground and reward right at "source". There is a good reason for this which I will explain in a future blog post.
Because Skip seems to really like to work at this game I decided to put the hide inside a toy squirrel tree and see if he could figure it out....of course he does, he is a rock star! Because there is no reward that Skip can eat when he gets to the find it is up to Dave to reward him as quickly as possible so that Skip gets the point that when he finds the hide he gets a reward, even if it is just an odor he is searching for. This is all building up to something so hang tight it will make sense. Also it is good to note that right now we are telling each other where we are hiding the treat box, but when you really get into Nosework Trials the hides are blind hides, meaning we will have to learn our dog's alert signals telling us he/she has "found source".
Stay tuned as another little terrier gets into the act.....
 |
| Jenny-Boo wants to share something with you......coming soon! |
No comments:
Post a Comment