Thank you for the feedback. Yes, I do know about rewarding at source, and should have been doing that. I was glad to see Dorie returning to the target without prompting. Yes, I do have a search que, but I try not to over-use it, as well as an end que. Dorie is pretty subtle in her search indication (which you’ll soon see in video) and a methodical searcher. If I talk to her too much, or re-cue her, it becomes a distraction, so I’ll have to play around with that as we proceed with the truffle training. We’ve done some box searches today which looked good, from my perspective, but I didn’t have anyone to video us. Will try again tomorrow, and continue forward to Lesson 2.
I admit that I have had a few moments of concern about introducing her to a new odor (and the clicker) so soon before our next NW3 trial (June 28), but we are still doing NW training and, now, truffle training, so I’m pretty sure she will be able to differentiate between the two, and not think she’s searching for truffle odor on trial date! 🙂