Reply To: Mary & Lola

[Alana McGee]

Before you had Lola in this area, when you were trying to find the ones placed last night that Salu did not find, did you ‘prime’ Lola prior to going out in the area? If not, we suggest you do.

As for do we offer manufactured success during the hunt: The short answer is yes, we do! It depends on many different factors as to ‘when’ we offer those as we read our dogs and each day and each area are a little different, but yes, we will manufacture finds for the dogs out in the woods and on orchards if they are not finding anything. We aim to avoid putting pressure on the dogs, and as we say, it should always be fun!

Great on the Party on the way out!

As always, you two are a joy to watch your connection. We think it is great you want to stay at this level of difficulty and gain more practice in new situations. That is perfect for Lola. You know her best. The more you can do that in newer locations with successful outings (aka fun and confidence building!) overtime the more confident she will become in even newer areas feeling more comfortable performing these same scent related tasks.

Nice search Mary She does many nice head checks like at 0:57. You do a great job of encouraging her to stay in a certain areas through verbal engagement. Nice mary! (1:03)
1:24 we love watching her when she hits the scene column, pinpoint (1:24, and at 2:34)- beautiful nose touch on target on that first one!

The section at 2:42 is a PERFECT example of bracketing. Bracketing is a terms we use when describing this behavior of the dog catching parts of a scent column or scent field in this case, and then creating and setting boundaries on where the scent has flowed around and slowly narrowing the search area. You can see her here going back and forth slowly narrowing down the area where true scent is coming from.

That was really nice!

Do you have any questions about anything in the video. It looks good Mary.