Reply To: Lois & Speed (DRTDT)

[Alana McGee]

I love your commentary (written and spoken!) Lois! Sweet Velo. We know who rules the roost! I love Velo following you. Truffle kitty indeed 🙂 You never know!! (*I have actually worked with a kitty before on indoor truffle finding just for fun)

The fact that you hid/ buried targets in dirt/ mulch as opposed to grass is good Lois. Scent will move differently through all of these things and so it is good practice. Your yard actually provides a lot of different textures and soil composition and opportunities for variance on hides, and that is to your and Speed & Monza?s benefit.

First hide: perfect. really both of you! He does great with Velo there 🙂 A quick appeasement head tilt and away he goes!

Second hide. Again! GREAT. Love the flop down. I do have to say Lois, your mechanics with the dogs are exceptional and improving all the time, but it really exemplary. Nice verbal communication, body posture mimicking energy, delivery of reward, etc. It all looks really good.

Good job on your delayed reward in that one, as we know you are building on that, and nicely done. He is responding well to it and being persistent.

So at 1:32 where he foot taps the old hole again, that?s ok. What we really like about it is how he doesn?t offer you the full chain again there even though you are approaching in which can sometimes push a dog to stay at a location with residual odor. It?s very very very ok he did though. There is trace odor there, you are just now at the stage where old finds can be ?confirmed? but are not rewarded in the same way as a source.

We want to commend you for your impulse to manufacture a hide when you did. That is FAB. We really strongly encourage this. Speed is doing great, but we do want to keep that success to time ratio pretty short! Ideally yes, he wouldn?t see you. But it is ok if he does on occasion. IT was ok too to hold off there because of your situation/ positioning but in the field when you are working on finding many targets (aka Lots of truffles!) minutes apart you will want to manufacture successes, and your instinct is spot on.

I think you were absolutely right to move yourself (and therefore Speed) to the other edge to try to help facility the last find at this point. Again, good communication skills and understanding and reading Speeds body language about stress levels in the situation.

You see that ?look? at you when he finds it here. Slightly different chain because he?s been thinking really hard and working for a few minutes. Totally fine, just internalize that and file it away in your brain as that may be some he does slightly more when he is starting to get a bit fatigued.

Looks really good Lois.

Don?t be concerned about grass vs. mulch. Do both, we encourage that. You?ll be hunting in the real world in a variety of different soil types, so the more types you can practice in, the better, as scent will move differently in different mediums.

Very nicely done. We like the addition of Velo 🙂 And Speed does a great job of ignoring him (as well as the barking neighbor!)