Shannon & Cricket (DRTDT)

[Alana McGee]

You and Cricket look FANTASTIC!

For the ball reward, will Cricket play ball at the source like Callie does in the video for Week 2? I think this is what you plan on trying next. We would love to see that.

A note about “accidentally dropping the truffle”. We understand you are focused on training when staging this, but want to point out that YOU will behave much differently if you drop a truffle in the forest. When you “drop” it, try to act more like you think you might if it wasn’t premeditated. Likely, you would first drop down to the ground yourself before actually thinking to ask your trained dog to help you. It’s just an instinct to do that but it does create a different picture for Cricket. The good news is that often the dogs like it when we are genuinely looking for something and need their help. It become a rather rewarding experience for the two of you. So, try to be a bit more true to a “reaction” to dropping your truffle on the ground…in a forest…where you can’t see it at all 😉

[Alana McGee]

Hey guys!

This morning we did four no-visual hides each with one target to find. We stayed inside to keep the environment simple and only make one thing harder at a time (as per your instructions) – she rocked it.

This afternoon we did three hides each with two hot targets each. This was the first time we’ve ever done more than one hot target. We stayed inside again to get the hang of this. The video is only from this segment. Cricket obviously isn’t used to finding more than one truffle at a time.

I’ve included two hides in the video- before each we did an imprinting round. Each hide had two targets. These are the second and third hides you are seeing because I have the most questions about them.

Hide 1: She finds the target right away, doesn’t alert and disengages from the search completely. So I walk in to try to help her out. Remember when I was asking about whether some rewards were too high value? After she finds the first target she doesn’t want to disengage with me and keeps checking out my hands – this is what prompted that question (I am using very high value treats here). She obviously is confused, I don’t know if I should have manufactured an easy success here. After she finds the second target I do reward with a ball, but cut that part of video for time constraints

<10-15 min break between rounds>

Hide 2: She gives me a half alert right away, but leaves even though I was coming in. Not sure what was up here or what I should have done. She steps over the second hot target and eats a treat (I think) and then alerts on the box. She keeps looking at the hot target I am putting in my pocket so I let her nose touch it and reward her. I think she gets back into the searching much easier in this round. Again I reward with a ball – I think you can see a little of that.

I am really interested to hear your thoughts on what I should do better next time!

[Alana McGee]

There was A LOT of hard work in these sessions! I think you will be very happy with the next session after we tweak a few small things!

[Alana McGee]

***I can’t seem to delete anything in this post, I’ll need to make a new one but you can disregard my question about the tea balls***

As always, thanks for the great feedback! I am pretty new at dog training in general and am learning a ton!

We tried two hides this morning, each with two targets. I tried the priming routine between hides. In the first search it looked a lot like my previous video (I actually manufactured success and called it quits), but the second hide I brought her almost the entire way to the exit after the first hide and did the priming there and sent her off to search and it went better! She needs a nap, and then I will try again.

The ball reward – I’d love to use the ball for every hide, and I will start using the ball in the priming exercise. Right now, Cricket seems to have a hard time transitioning from the ball to any type of work and back again (ball has always been a super fun play thing), I am working on using it as a reward for behaviours she knows really well, so for right now I think I’ll just use it at the end of our searches. Is this ok? I am working on teaching her to put her ball away as recommended earlier.

Question about your feedback – you ask if we can use tea balls, and yes I can get some more. But, should I be hiding them or putting them in the open?

I have video of our searches this morning, but I’d like to try the tea ball thing this afternoon and post that video for you to see as well.

[Alana McGee]

I’m including a video of our last search of the day, I think this one went the best. I find if we don’t almost leave the search area between finds it is really hard to reengage her in finding the next target.

Targets are hidden under small pieces of flannel, I tried with the tea balls out in the open, but it was open season on tea balls. It was pretty funny. I like the flannel because she gets to root around and ‘dig’ them out, I think she likes that.

I’d love your thoughts on the best way to progress. Should we keep doing this a lot more and really get multiple hides going? What about blind hides inside? Should I continue doing easy hides outside or stick to increasing skills inside?

[Alana McGee]

Utoh Shannon- looks like we missed this. Could had sworn we had gotten it! Our apologies. We’ll get you this review as soon as possible.

[Alana McGee]

Great you are working on the ball in bag trick, as well in other scenarios and you are doing fabulously on your training!

[quote] I find if we don’t almost leave the search area between finds it is really hard to reengage her in finding the next target.[/quote]

This is interesting, and we would agree with you. As per what Kroistin said in her previous commentary, that is okay. You can modify this for a behavior in the field and overtime it may decrease. (*the amount of distance you have to have from the site of the find before beginning again). As Cricket gets more and more comfortable doing searches one after another the amount of distance and time between them can be shortened without it causing stress. Does that make sense?

I like how she leaves the cold tea balls, even after playing with it for a second. That?s awesome Shannon. It is so fun to see how far this has come in a relatively short time!

Also, we think your idea with the fabric is relatively genius, and she [b]is[/b] rooting and it she is more engaged with the odor itself. It looks really really good.

Whats nice is you really can see a distinct difference when she finds what she is looking for.

This video looks really good shannon (aside from Cricket aspirating treats… mine do that sometimes)

You ask about what to do.

Heres what we would suggest, and it is going to be bouncing around a bit, but that is OK.

Stay inside and keep working on multiple hides indoors and build to multiple blind hides indoors.

While you are also doing this you can start doing single hides outside for variety and to slowly start getting used to working outdoors with distractions, but focus for the moment on building multiple hides indoors. Until that skill is a little more fluid you?ll get stuck at a point transitioning outside where you can?t go beyond 1 hide.

Do keep doing an occasional outside though, and feel free to show us that. You may even be able to build to two outside in a small area, making it really easy and you can work on your priming in-between.

She?s picking up the multiple hides very quickly, its just going to take building it a little more.

Whats nice about truffle hunting in general is some of the skills can be moved around on when you do them. For example, it would be ideal to be able to do blind hides indoors and know how you react to aspects of the unknown before going outside, but you can always come back and work on that later. We aren?t concerned about you showing or leading Cricket to the target through body language, directly or indirectly through body cue targeting (which is one of the reasons to do blind hides) and Cricket?s alert is coming along really really nicely. It still is going to be important that you practice these skills, as in the wild you don?t know where the truffles are and you not knowing combined with a strong alert from Cricket to help you identify when she has found one, is pretty key.

So, main focus is keep building and working on multiples inside. Outside, practice with 1 to work on starting to be able to work in the outdoors and build up the positive reward history for that as well so when you do start to ask her for finding multiple outdoors she will be more comfortable in that environment.

Then when you are ready, blind inside. I would do this with one hide to start with so you begin to feel comfortable with it, then you can extend that out to multiple blind hides.

Do keep occasionally working outside though. I know it?s going to start getting really cold there soon, and we do want Cricket used to outdoor distractions.

*Also your commentary makes me laugh “open season for Teaballs?.? 🙂

[Alana McGee]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

We’ll practice as you recommend tonight and aim to post a video tomorrow or Sunday if we have any questions about our progress.

Question – We were in the mountains on Wednesday and Wade was walking Cricket (I was off taking pictures) and he said she was super interested in an area where mushrooms were growing. I didn’t see it, so I don’t know if she was alerting, and we were *well* outside of what I understand is typical truffle habitat (but I could be wrong), so I was curious as to whether truffles and mushrooms have similar odors. It could very well be that there was just some super interesting animal scent that she was really in to.

I also would never have guessed that my literal puppy would extrapolate her alert to an unfamiliar scent – so mostly I am curious as to whether dogs who hunt truffles also alert on mushrooms.

[Alana McGee]

Today was a great truffle hunting day! While it was too gusty to search outside, we did a few two target searches insides this morning. Cricket moved to find the second target without much of a problem, and we had to leave the room less and she got back into searching much more quickly. We even did one three target find! She is a rock star.

For your viewing pleasure, we have two blind hides we did tonight.

Each hide has one hot target
All of the boxes have a tea ball in them (I think Cricket was starting to learn that the one that made the noise was the right one). Instructions to Wade where to open each box, touch each tea ball and place boxes in a row, and I also asked Wade to wander around the basement as he was doing it (trying to weave in the proofing stuff). I’ve marked the inside of the boxes as hot or cold so I can tell them apart when I open them (and Cricket can’t use the marker smell as a signal).

The second hide – she was starting to alert on the correct box and then leaves it. Wade did come down the stairs at some point, you can see she walks out of frame to go see him after the false alert – I think this is what might have thrown her off. She alerts on the incorrect box, but we check it out and she is able to get back into searching again.

I was *so* surprised it was the wrong box since it looked like a strong alert. I’ve looked at the difference between the alert in the first hide and this one. The only difference I see is that she looks back at me right away after alerting, and she doesn’t at all in the first search until I basically crash into her 🙂

I really enjoyed the blind search – it was a completely different feeling than when I know where the hot target is.

Earlier in the evening (not on film) we had a search where she alerted on three wrong boxes before going to the correct one. I’m not sure what was going on, but you can see something similar in the fist hide on this video – she doesn’t alert incorrectly at all – but it is almost like she avoids the hot target until she has checked out everything else (?) I’m not sure what this is about, but I think it is interesting.

[Alana McGee]

Okay- so going to handle this in two posts one for this and one for you video

[quote=”Shannon B” post=72506]Thanks for the feedback guys.

We’ll practice as you recommend tonight and aim to post a video tomorrow or Sunday if we have any questions about our progress.

Question – We were in the mountains on Wednesday and Wade was walking Cricket (I was off taking pictures) and he said she was super interested in an area where mushrooms were growing. I didn’t see it, so I don’t know if she was alerting, and we were *well* outside of what I understand is typical truffle habitat (but I could be wrong), so I was curious as to whether truffles and mushrooms have similar odors. It could very well be that there was just some super interesting animal scent that she was really in to.

I also would never have guessed that my literal puppy would extrapolate her alert to an unfamiliar scent – so mostly I am curious as to whether dogs who hunt truffles also alert on mushrooms.[/quote]

Kristin and I were just discussing this the other day.

A) Don’t rule out habitat for truffles- there are HUNDREDS of species, and if Cricket has generalized from the VOCs you have worked with to another species of truffle, edible or not- FANTASTIC. Do you remember what kinds of trees? (Take photos of them next time!)

B) Some mushrooms can share VOCs and dogs will occasionally alert on them. It’s rarer but can happen. They are not technically wrong, as we have taught them that is one of the acceptable VOCs being emitted by the mushroom but now it comes down to pairing down the criteria for what counts in the acceptable array of vocs that meets criteria for reward. It’s more advanced when you get to this stage- but don’t freak out. It’s ok. We go over this in FE530.

C) One of the biggest parts of truffle hunting is just what you described in the field of not knowing if she was smelling animal odor or something else more truffle related. This comes down to relationship and understanding your canine’s behavior and your connection.

This takes time and practice. And each dog is different. Some dogs have more subtle body language and expressions that indicate mood or when on odor. You eventually will learn to tell the difference between ‘crittering’ and truffle sniffing. This is why we transition from site location to location, gradually taking you into a forested setting. It gives you a chance to start to get used to all the other minutia that starts to come into play when you actually start truffle hunting in the field.

The important thing is to TRUST your dog. That is why we spend so much time on foundation training is when you get outdoors- much less forests, the intensity and complexity sky rockets, and you and your dog need to have a good solid basis for understanding one another.

[Alana McGee]

[quote]but it is almost like she avoids the hot target until she has checked out everything else [/quote]

That?s ok. it?s a process of figuring out the game. We are working on cricket?s timetable, not ours 🙂 Many dogs need to check out an area before they decide to go into working/ alerting mode.

That first alert looked really good.
That was an awesome jackpot of treats 🙂 Go Cricket.

Did you prime Cricket on the second search?

Don?t really have all that much to add. You did fabulous with the false alert and checking and then moving on, as did Cricket. There could be any number of reasons why she did that- she?s trying to get cookies any way she can! But here is what I think is going on:

Please note that the box she ?false? alerted on was in the same location as the hot hide previously. So there could be lingering odor. This is actually really interesting- but a very good learning moment because we know she is picking up trace odor, what we are teaching her now is that only strong source gets a reward.

Great instructions to Wade by the way. Really, great.

She does offer an alert right out of the gate on the second hide, but it is almost like play- what is great is that afterwards she does come back to it, and stays at it. Again, strong source, not trace odor.

This is actually very interesting 🙂 and Good 🙂 Just keep at it .

[Alana McGee]

[quote=”Alana McGee” post=73284]

A) Don’t rule out habitat for truffles- there are HUNDREDS of species, and if Cricket has generalized from the VOCs you have worked with to another species of truffle, edible or not- FANTASTIC. Do you remember what kinds of trees? (Take photos of them next time!)
[/quote]

Haha Wade and I were just laughing at the 8 million photos I took that day and how I actually captured her doing the “mushroom sniffing” thing – it was my last photo of the day as we were getting ready to go. We were at Cameron Lake in Waterton National Park – subalpine. So spruce and fir and lodgepole pine in the area.

The area:

Although, even if it was a truffle, we couldn’t have dug it up in a national park.

[Alana McGee]

Yes, it is TOTALLY possibly a truffle area. In fact, 100% positive some kind of truffles in that area. Likley not dense, but yes. They are a main staple in fall/winter for squirrels/ small rodents. Fir, subalpine, pine, spruce etc.

I see Doug fir. Different species form on lodgepole.

Great photos 🙂

So don’t rule it out. Now are they an edible species is a different matter- but it is totally possible, yes.

[Alana McGee]

Haha – that is amazing!

I love that it is totally possible Cricket was alerting. If so, she generalized far out from what she has ever experienced – we’ve never truffle hunted anywhere but home, she has never worked with Wade etc. I guess we’ll never know for sure, but it is fun to think that it is a possibility!

[Alana McGee]

Shannon,
When they love the game, they will surprise you! You have built a strong reward history for this game. Way to go Cricket!

Callie has never hunted with my husband. Last year, while out on a walk at a nearby middle school, she found one! She INSISTED he pick it up. He thinks he is now a “truffle hunter” 😉

[Author]

Posts