Reply To: Annie & Ashley

[Alana McGee]

I’ve been sick for a few days so not many hides. Better now.

10/18 saturday first buried hide – also a blind hide.
Today Bill put out the hides – incredible proofing – 5 min cook
4 hides – normal
2 hides – 1 buried about 1″ each – the other too deep (she did smell it)

weather a little warn not hot. 18 Oct 11:32 am PDT 72 51dew 48 humid NNW 4G07
Area: standard + expanded

Ashley was beyond excited and ready to hunt. She was inside bouncing and barking to get out since she knew
Bill was placing hides. Bill had the camer rolling, Ashley dashed out the door and started searching, Mom running to catch-up.

She is making a pattern of running through an area an getting a first sniff. I have no idea how she can pick up scent when she is running so fast but she does. Her nose leads the way and her body better keep up! S. She will stop in a hot area do a little more sniffing then continue her overall search. She usually locates 3-4 general areas with scent before she goes back and pinpoints and alerts.

She found all 4 normal hides and 1 buried hide. She had so much fun with the last buried hide.

When she was in the area of the buried hide, I got in with her and helped dig a touch. Then she joined in and she dug it out we had a HUGE, HUGE, LOUD party. I’m sure my neighbors think I’m crazy! 😉 Then she proceeded to dig a big trench and stick her nose in every so often checking for more targets -she was having a great time. Not good for the forest, but she wasn’t hurting anything and we didn’t want to ruin her party time. Ashley dug a
hole about 4″ wide, 8″ deep and at least 12″ long – she kept looking for more tins. Then she was done and super charged. She did a little more sniffing but was in a high play mode.

She did great! I’m exiced to see how the next buried hide goes now that she understands the game has changed
a bit.

This was the first session/video in which I feel I finally got things right. Even Bill agreed. This course shoud really be called Training the Truffle Dog Handler. We were really working as a team and working off each other. Ashley’s alerts changed since we were working together much more. I really prefer the blind hides.

Help needed with idea for training plan:
So my training plan was: having 1 tin slightly buried and another close by and a little deeper be good to try so she learns that targets can be deeper Also, this seems like it would help build value.

But after reading your post to Rachel this is advanced and should not be done. Thoughts?

For now we will have have a mix of a few easy ‘normal’ hides and a few buried- not close and build on this.