Well, not the best video, but it was fun to work with Haggis.
I now have a full repetoire of behaviours that I need to train Haggis on, such as passive indicator, sit whilst I try and locate the truffle, rewarding at truffle…not panic when Haggis finds a truffle and it’s in his mouth…and so many more things.
Haggis did really well as this orchard is only 24 trees, but the smell in there would have been an overload for his senses. The orchard owner had hidden a truffle for us so he would have a win, and Haggis was just wandering around smelling everything, and then he started to get excited and we thought he had found a truffle. After digging quite deeply there didn’t appear to be anything there, however he had dug quite quickly and deep so could have thrown it somewhere. His tail is just going all the time and he is fun to follow.
He hadn’t really done any harness work before and prior to getting in the orchard he was unbelievably badly behaved and you would have thought I was killing him. When we got to the orchard, his behaviour changed and suddenly the harness wasn’t causing him any problem and he was in the scent. It was lovely to watch and he just had his head down searching and I just followed behind letting him control where he wanted to go. He eventually got down wind of the sample and although he starting digging just down from it, he then moved and found it. Was really exciting for him.
The video shows me how much homework I have before the next season. Just need his brain to engage, and the hormones to stop racing through his body. Mind you, he is only 8 months old so am thrilled with his progress.