Denise and Elle (access until October 23, 2014)

[Alana McGee]

Hi Denise. How is it going?

[Denise]

Hi Kristin,
Sorry I thought my last post to you had gone thru!
I was on vacation without my laptop which must have been the issue as I was using a notepad.
I noticed my time is up on the 25th. Could we extend?
Denise

[Denise]

Here is my post that didn’t go thru,
Hi Kristin,

I watched the video analysis and here are my answers to your observations!

Elle will stay on scent with her nose and has started to look up at me with the “hey here it is and where is my chicken?!”

We have cleaned up the house and put the boxes away – I have worked with the clicker without her around so hopefully my timing is better now.

I do use the same verbal cue, “let’s go to work”. We are not doing nose work anymore and just focusing on truffles, so I hope we can use this command as she is very familiar with it.

I am now “having a party” when she hits the scent. Thanks for the tip for luring her away as most of the time I am doing the training by myself.

I filmed the white container video first then hid the container in the box. She is used to car searches, house searches and outside searches all without boxes, just hidden q-tips. The boxes are what she started with as a pup and is comfortable with and I thought it would be good to start with pairing the new truffle scent with her boxes and her normal scent anise. I then removed the anise and she now just on the truffle scent. So I will remove the boxes now.

During the 2nd video, she did not hit the container in the box correctly so I waited until she gave me a better alert.

Yes, the 3rd video is the last in the order.

I will make sure I work on getting down with her during the reward, as this is different behavior from scent work training, and will stop using the boxes and switch up the containers.

And thanks for the tips about how to stop, and will pick up the scent, as she will stay until I run out of chicken!!
Elle is really loving this!!
Thanks,

Denise

[Alana McGee]

This all sounds fantastic Denise! Can you post some current video?

I’m glad it all made sense. All small details but they have a big cumulative impact on training. Thank you for clarifying that you are no longer doing nose work. That helps. Yes, use the verbal cue she knows then! If you ever do go back to nose work, you will likely want to change THAT verbal to something else since truffle training will evolve into you and Elle rooting around in the ground to find a truffle. Not a desirable behavior at a nose work trial!

You and Elle are doing great! Keep it up. Can’t wait to see new video 🙂

We do have options for extending access so we can discuss that when we get closer to July 25th.

[Denise]

Hi Kristin,
Cool!
My husband is out of town so I will post video when he gets back this weekend. I have been hiding the odor under stacks of pillows on the floor all over the house, and Elle has been enjoying sticking her nose between them to get to the odor. I have been staying and rewarding as we uncover the odor.
She is having fun!
Denise

[Alana McGee]

We are looking forward to seeing video! I love seeing them have fun rooting around and having fun 🙂

[Denise]

Hi Kristin,
I am uploading new video now. I forgot to use the clicker…
The videos show 3 hides with Elle. I put the scent under pillows and blankets so she had to keep her nose on it. Hopefully I stayed long enough with her?
Denise

[Denise]

[Denise]

Hi Kristin,
This is the first video as you can see Elle took a bit to realize no boxes!
Denise

[Denise]

[Alana McGee]

Hi Denise!

Just wanted to chime in and say you have been doing a fantastic job and it has been fun to watch you guys progress. You do a great job with line handling skills and allowing Elle enough time to figure it out on her own without adding pressure.

In the “Elle 2” video at about the 0:37 mark you do a nice job of staying with her and keeping her engaged. This is critical later, an it is a beautiful example of staying engaged. You’re doing a great job.

If you see her do a nose target on truffle odor, which it almost looks like she does there, reward heavily for that. That is a fantastic precision skill that will be helpful later, and if you can build it in now to a behavior chain because she offers it, awesome!

It would be great to practice, as you are with pillows, towels, and blankets, but build to the level where she is actively engaging moving the obstacle out of the way to find the source, even with her nose through prodding. Try using a flat towel on the ground and place the target under an edge a couple of inches in (you may have already done this). This is a tad tough scenario as the towel is trapping some of the odor but once she hits the scent column it would be interesting to see how she engages with the odor. Does she put her nose on top of the towel at the source, or does she push the towel out of the way to get at source? If you can, allow the target to cook in this scenario for at least 5 minutes.

You can begin to change the criteria for reward a bit, and lengthen her active engagement with the target. You already have a pretty nice re-alert going, and she stays really nicely engaged with you at source (which is fantastic on your part) but we want to build to very identifiable alert.

You guys are really doing great together, keep it up.

-Alana

[Alana McGee]

Hi Denise.

Your access to the forum has expired and I am closing this thread for discussion now. Please let us know if you would like to purchase Extended Support to continue receiving feedback on your training progress.

It was a pleasure having you in class. I look forward to hearing how you and Elle are doing with training.

Kristin

[Denise]

Hi Kristin,
Here is the Elle and the towels!
(Elle went to front door to look at the squirrels first)
Denise

[Alana McGee]

Hi Denise!

The video is listed as Private, so we can’t view it yet. Probably just need to change a setting so it can be embedded on this website? Most likely.

Let us know and We’ll check it out!

Looking forward to it

-Alana

[Alana McGee]

Hi Denise!

Yes squirrel watching is always a good time. You may find once you are out in the field that Elle will need a few minutes exploring and being comfortable with her environment before she will “go to work”. That is perfectly ok! Just remember to keep that in mind.

It was great to see her on odor, and even though it wasn’t the more aggressive alert you are building to , when she left and then she came back! Its the coming back to source that was so nice to see! Nice vocal praise, and at the 1:00 minute mark when you get down and start engaging at the ground level she seems to have nose targeted it! Great! nice use of praise and staying engaged with her during this process.

In the second portion, she (and you) do a fantastic job of staying at odor and rewarding. We like persistence.

In the third hide she does something very nice. Which is she did an alert (a nose bump on target but because a reward didn’t appear readily, she looked at you and did it again. Fabulous.

Keep up the heavy rewards for the more aggressive nose targets. It will be interested to see how she interacts with odor when you make it a little harder and less accessible, if she will push things like pillows out of the way.

Good job!

-Alana

[Author]

Posts