Reply To: Shannon & Cricket (DRTDT)

[Alana McGee]

Hey guys!

This morning we did four no-visual hides each with one target to find. We stayed inside to keep the environment simple and only make one thing harder at a time (as per your instructions) – she rocked it.

This afternoon we did three hides each with two hot targets each. This was the first time we’ve ever done more than one hot target. We stayed inside again to get the hang of this. The video is only from this segment. Cricket obviously isn’t used to finding more than one truffle at a time.

I’ve included two hides in the video- before each we did an imprinting round. Each hide had two targets. These are the second and third hides you are seeing because I have the most questions about them.

Hide 1: She finds the target right away, doesn’t alert and disengages from the search completely. So I walk in to try to help her out. Remember when I was asking about whether some rewards were too high value? After she finds the first target she doesn’t want to disengage with me and keeps checking out my hands – this is what prompted that question (I am using very high value treats here). She obviously is confused, I don’t know if I should have manufactured an easy success here. After she finds the second target I do reward with a ball, but cut that part of video for time constraints

<10-15 min break between rounds>

Hide 2: She gives me a half alert right away, but leaves even though I was coming in. Not sure what was up here or what I should have done. She steps over the second hot target and eats a treat (I think) and then alerts on the box. She keeps looking at the hot target I am putting in my pocket so I let her nose touch it and reward her. I think she gets back into the searching much easier in this round. Again I reward with a ball – I think you can see a little of that.

I am really interested to hear your thoughts on what I should do better next time!