Okay, I guess I’m still having trouble getting the video to load, but I hope you can see it when you click on the above link.
This is a video of Dorie working truffle odor in ORT-style boxes. Two boxes have odor. Her alert is almost the same as her alert for NW odor, but not quite as ‘sharp’. She also started out giving me a false alert (not in this run) because I had a much too high value food reward (bacon…), so I switched to a reward that is high value but not so much as bacon. Although I understand the value of working inside at the beginning, it is challenging for us because our house is very small, with little room to maneuver. But I am please to see her return to the odor source indicating she recognizes that is what she is hunting for. I have also discovered that with the new truffle odor she is learning to search for, she seems to need more encouragement than with regular NW odors. Would it make a difference if I paired the truffle odor with a food reward to reinforce the association – at least in the beginning – as we do for introducing new odors in NW? Three more videos to follow, each with different types of containers.