Elaine Booker & Dorie

[Alana McGee]

Welcome to class Elaine!  This is the forum topic where you will post your questions and homework videos for feedback from the instructors.  Please take a moment to tell us about yourself, your dog and your interest in truffle hunting.

Class begins June 1st but you already have access to the first lesson so go ahead and check that out!  You can begin posting video homework and questions June 1st.

[Elaine]

Hi everyone,
I’ll be participating in this class with my 5-year old GSD, Dorie (aka, Hunky-Dorie!), who is a seasoned K9NW dog and my constant companion. We live in Glendora, CA and look forward to learning truffle hunting together, finding “the gold” here in Southern California, and getting to know all of you in the process.

Best regards,
Elaine & Dorie

[Alana McGee]

Welcome Elaine! We look forward to seeing you and Dorie in action 🙂

We are heading into Week 2 of class so you may want to submit one video of your Week 1 homework and 1 video of your Week 2 homework if you find yourself progressing quickly.

[Elaine]

This video shows Dorie recognizes the target odor (in the tea ball) and understands it brings reward. I introduced her to the truffle odor this morning and then we did this exercise once before recording this video. Tomorrow I will set up target boxes with truffle odor in one and record her performing that search.

[Elaine]

I’m not certain the video loaded properly. I can view it on YouTube when I click on the icon at the end of my post (above), but it does not appear embedded in the post, as others’ do.

[Alana McGee]

Odd it doesn’t Embed- Kristin may have to help with trouble shooting that, but we can see it by clicking the link above.

She does know odor and reward. She knows this game!. Very quick, precise touches I might add! Looks good. The one thing we have mentioned on other threads is well, is delivery of reward at source. Part of the reasoning is for association, the other reasoning is when actually truffle hunting it is incredibly value to have the dogs nose at source and remain at source. Not all truffles are shallow and easy to access, so this becomes a very valuable skill later in the field. Being able to have a re-alert with a nose touch is also very helpful.

Think of avalanche detection. Odor does not move uniformly through snow, nor the soil. Our dogs are our tools to indicate where the truffle is. Sometimes the dog will alert where the odor is coming out of the ground but that is not where the truffle is actually located, so we have to dig down, and ask the dog to reassess the situation and tell us which direction we should dig in.

Dorie does a very nice job with an unsolicited re-alert. Think about adding a cue on this and what you would like that cue to be. Great timing.

That is a very nice ending cue as well, assuming that what you were doing there yes?

Well done. Since she is familiar with NW this beginning games should come pretty naturally. Well done.

[Elaine]

Thank you for the feedback. Yes, I do know about rewarding at source, and should have been doing that. I was glad to see Dorie returning to the target without prompting. Yes, I do have a search que, but I try not to over-use it, as well as an end que. Dorie is pretty subtle in her search indication (which you’ll soon see in video) and a methodical searcher. If I talk to her too much, or re-cue her, it becomes a distraction, so I’ll have to play around with that as we proceed with the truffle training. We’ve done some box searches today which looked good, from my perspective, but I didn’t have anyone to video us. Will try again tomorrow, and continue forward to Lesson 2.

I admit that I have had a few moments of concern about introducing her to a new odor (and the clicker) so soon before our next NW3 trial (June 28), but we are still doing NW training and, now, truffle training, so I’m pretty sure she will be able to differentiate between the two, and not think she’s searching for truffle odor on trial date! 🙂

[Alana McGee]

Your video is fixed and embedded properly now. Just use the URL or share link next time when posting. No need to grab an embed code. The website will do that for you 🙂

I can tell already that we are really going to enjoy watching you and Dorie progress. Love the energy and partnership between you two! I wanted to commend you on your understanding of Dorie’s needs regarding verbal information in your last post. Wonderful observations of subtleties 😀

[Elaine]

Okay, I guess I’m still having trouble getting the video to load, but I hope you can see it when you click on the above link.

This is a video of Dorie working truffle odor in ORT-style boxes. Two boxes have odor. Her alert is almost the same as her alert for NW odor, but not quite as ‘sharp’. She also started out giving me a false alert (not in this run) because I had a much too high value food reward (bacon…), so I switched to a reward that is high value but not so much as bacon. Although I understand the value of working inside at the beginning, it is challenging for us because our house is very small, with little room to maneuver. But I am please to see her return to the odor source indicating she recognizes that is what she is hunting for. I have also discovered that with the new truffle odor she is learning to search for, she seems to need more encouragement than with regular NW odors. Would it make a difference if I paired the truffle odor with a food reward to reinforce the association – at least in the beginning – as we do for introducing new odors in NW? Three more videos to follow, each with different types of containers.

[Elaine]

Another video, using round tins.
Apparently, I uploaded the previous video properly!
Also, I am going to fire my husband as videographer… 🙁

[Elaine]

Video of a search with larger metal containers and a plastic container.

[Elaine]

Video of a search using travel size rum bottles! One odor source (bottle with black lid). This is one of my favorite types of container searches – no holes in the lids, just lightly fastened – just enough for odor to escape.

Next I’ll upload the photos of typical outside terrain and vegetation, near where I live and would likely search in.

[Elaine]

[Elaine]

Hills north of Glendora #2
note, photo in post above is “Hills north of Glendora #3)

[Elaine]

More of Hills north of Glendora

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