Reply To: Best of ?Fancy?

[Alana McGee]

TDC:
Hi Launie- I am sorry for the absence- have been traveling and having electronic issues.

I am excited to see you tomorrow and we can chat about some of the stuff that you guys have been practicing. Keep working in your yard when you can. Go back and still practice hides inside the house too. She seemed to not get as easily distracted in those scenarios. We want to keep it fun and always a game. Dogs don’t trade down, so whatever is the most fun or motivating thing will take priority- be that rolling in clover or hunting truffles. We want to build the ‘awesome’ into the game.

You guys are doing a great job. Keep it up and keep practicing.

That park you are working in looks like a great environment to practice more complicated stuff in. What ideally we would like you to do is to go back to your yard and start actually burying the targets there. You are lightly burying them in that park it looks like. Now go back to the yard and actually practice burying them at first shallow depths and then deeper (up to 3″ eventually) and let the targets cook for a bit (sit in the ground for 20 minutes to an hour) and then take Fancy out to find them.

You can keep practicing like you are in that large park with semi obscured hides, but we want to start getting Fancy really into locating buried treasure. The amount of distractions in that park are 10 fold the distractions in your yard because your yard is more familiar to her. In the long run it will make her much more solid in the field and then in the forest.

She and you are doing great on realerting on targets and it is great to see that in the video. She hits it right on the head, which is ideal.

You have some very good inclinations, such as walking and movement to reengage Fancy when she starts to get distracted.

If she seems to be really distracted, which appears to happen a bit at the 3 minute mark, don’t force it. Go walk around somewhere else, go play a bit and come back. You may be able to snap her focus back to work when you return to the area. Worst case scenario you come back next day and see if you can find the target. If not, don’t worry. You are not the first to loose a target. Happens to all of us. In fact she may find it days later if you go back. You never know. What you don’t want is to make it not fun or a game. If she isn’t having fun she wont work for it, or her reliability will be intermittent. Just keep practicing. Don’t expect to be able to work for long periods of time yet. You and Fancy will build to that. Some days you maybe only get one good hide. That is ok. Just try to remember that

You guys are doing great though