Hi Alana and Kristin,
Here are photos of my 3 training sites.
Site 1: Part of my driveway. There is a short, but steep slope at the back that leads up to a young Doug Fir stand. There is also a road that passes through and beyond the driveway and leads to a Christmas Tree farm.
Site 2: A small field that runs parallel to my driveway. The field is on a gradual slope that runs north-south from top to bottom. There are a lot of gopher holes in this field, and the Christmas tree farm workers often drive through it.
-1.jpg)
Site 3: This is a little way up the road that runs through and past my driveway (farther up the road seen in the Site 1 photo). It has a steep but small bank. I would like to use this area since scent will pool, rise, or fall in the bank. There are also obstacles like a stump and of course, the Christmas trees.
-1.jpg)
All three of these areas are very familiar to Dottie as we play and go for walks in them regularly. So they shouldn’t be overly distracting. I will be keeping Dottie on a leash or long line at all 3 sites.
Now for our video.
This video is from one practice session. I cut out parts where I was rearranging the tins or we were taking play breaks, but all reps were done in one session. I think it went pretty well.
The tins are harder to see in the video than I expected, so I labelled them in the hopes that it helps. A better camera has been ordered and will be arriving this week! So clarity and better resolution are on the way!
During one rep, the 6-year old neighbor girls started hollering “Hello!” to us from down the road. Holy distraction! I was keeping an eye on Dottie in my peripheral vision so I wouldn’t lose track of her. I kept this in because I was surprised that she didn’t lose focus. It is especially great because the girls love to come over and play with my dogs, hence Dottie is usually very excited to see them when they are around. So this sort of showed a new level of dedication to the search/task at hand.