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Forwarded Response:
At 0:27 that looked good- you were not jumping in at all! He gave a very nice and CLEAR paw alert. Good job elongating the reared sequence and it looks like you asked for re-alert as well. That looked good! REALLY GREAT job on the length of your reward. That is what we want to see.
at 1:06 did you provide a cue again to start searching? Just wondering if he is cueing off your body language or if there was a verbal there as well. We can tell by your posture (As am sure can he that the previous sequence of events and the behavior chain is complete, but was just wondering if you prompted).
Nice delivery on the second hide, and again, nice rewards. It doesn’t look like you are jumping in too soon at this point. You can slowly start to build in more delay, but Rudy’s alerts are pretty clear here. If you are comfortable identifying the alerts as they manifest now, they we think it is fine. Are you okay with his current alert?
Just interesting: Notice at 1:58 after you wipe off your hands (prior to any verbal cue) Rudy already re engages on truffle hunting.
Rudy goes back to the site of the hide but doesn’t alert. That’s okay. We consider it being thorough. He is following residual odor cones. If he did spend significant time at that site you can acknowledge that yes, there was a truffle a truffle there through verbal communication (and lure away if necessary), but we don’t want to reward for that behavior of re-alerting without source. We don’t want to create a behavior wherein Rudy thinks he gets paid again and again at the site of residual odor. (This is why you also pick up your targets after he finds them)
We want to reward at source and concentration. Sometimes truffles can ‘nest’. meaning multiple in the same area or even on top of each other and so we do want Rudy to be persistent if he indicates on that spot later (again) in the field, but at this juncture we know that you don’t have stacked odor (two on top of each other), and so it allows for you to experience aspects of this behavior with the certainty of control of environment ( as opposed to later stages when actually truffle hunting, wherein you will not know if odor is stacked or not). Does that make sense?
Right now doing just what you are doing and letting the scenario play out and ignoring it is just fine.
Would definitely say you could start enlarging the search area!
It looks great Laurie. Well done.