Reply To: Lois and Monza (August 2014)

[Alana McGee]

Lois:

After watching the video commentary for a classmate, it answered some questions I had about removing the dog from source. When I did the NoseWorks classes, I struggled with proofing the dog by trying to pull them from the source because my motives for NW class were truffle hunting and as Kristin pointed out in her 1st comments for that classmate, there are lots of truffles out there! So I struggled with removing dog from source, although it made sense for the objectives of the NW class.

Anyway, here is a composite from today: morning was before watching my classmate’s video and then we did a short session this evening after watching the video commentary attempting to incorporate some concepts mentioned: open box, transport dog. Hopefully that was okay for me to try.

A few things:
-Monza thinks boxes are props and will do a chin target and she also loves to bow
-This morning, we started with only 1 box to re-introduce her to concept of the scent is in a box (not in video)
-I had a few uncoordinated click/treat/move or remove box, but it doesn’t affect Monza. I’m rusty working with boxes! I saw a couple times where I move treat hand before clicking….
-When you watch the segment titled “after watching Vidoc commentary” you will see Monza go over to a shelf. There is a bag of treats over there and it’s also where I placed the hot box after I worked my other dog, Speed, but she gets back to work.
-This felt a little sloppy trying to open box, put scent tin back in box, close it, and transport dog, but awkward videos lend themselves to valuable feedback! It was also a bit of a stretch for Monza. You can see her check all the boxes in the 1st segment, and start to offer a chin target or bow because she thinks it’s a prop, but she keeps moving as she thinks hard about this being a scent game and not about tricks with props. At least that’s my impression.
-At this point I think I can fade the clicker and use a verbal marker. I think she needs a couple more sessions with this same setup until she’s a little more efficient and I settle down. 🙂

-We won’t do truffle work again until Thursday or Friday. My plan is to track on Wednesdays and 1 day on weekend, truffle work on 2 or 3 days, with days off in between. Truffle sessions will continue to be very short and never on a tracking day so she’s not overloaded. I didn’t want to take tracking this session, but it’s the last class Lucy is offering until Spring.

Thanks Alana and Kristin!