Damned Hard Hide

Got done with work in plenty of time and needed another trip to Home Depot... so I set up three hides in the flooring aisle on my way in.  Then shopped and made my purchases and got Gimme for a search.  Even setting them up before I shopped, they still only had about 10 minutes to cook, which isn't a lot given the difficulty of the hides.

The first (Anise) was close to the threshold, but partially blocked by a column between it and our "start line".  The second (Birch) was about 45' away, further down the flooring aisle and five feet off the ground (we only need 4' for NW2).  Then I set another (Birch) just 8' from that hide and close to the ground, on the same side.

Gimme did find the first hide fairly soon, but not until she had passed it going both directions a couple of times.  I think her passing it stirred the air enough that she then caught it on the far side of the column.  I love watching her work out how to get from where she smells it to where it is.

It took a long time to find the next hide - the low one.  I had purposely set up the two of them to present a difficult converging odor challenge.  They were at different levels (which often makes it easier), but the same odor and really close together (both of which makes it harder).

She was actually catching the odor where it was pooling on the other side of the aisle against a bunch of flooring product.  I think the low hide was drifting across, pooling and then drifting up the front of the product.  And the odor from the high hide was basically drifting across at its level and only slightly falling to join the pool.  The reason I think it wasn't falling (or if it was, not enough to reach nose level), is because it was high enough that she couldn't follow it across the aisle to source.

Gimme went back and forth, up and down repeatedly where it was pooling.  I didn't see her getting it sorted out and then all of the sudden she raced in a beeline to where the low hide was.  One quick sniff and that paw was whacking the odor.  I was really surprised by the absolute directness of her movement to the odor and an instant later identifying exactly where it was.  I'd set the hides, so I would have noticed if she had done the infamous "cataloging" nose tilt.

From there to finding the last hide was really challenging.  She still kept searching the same pooling area, with an occasional diversion to searching the other side (i.e. away from the low hide), but she just didn't ever go up to find the source.

I let her puzzle at it a very long time and then finally "made a corner" with my body near the high hide.  That is something I learned at the converging odor seminar - though honestly, even though it was very clear that she was in converging odor, had I not known where odor was, I'm not sure I would have made a corner in that spot.  In any case, the next time she came back to that side of the aisle... it didn't take long at all for her to zero in on it.  She was verrrrry pleased with herself and naturally I rewarded her copiously.

I wish I had used my new jumbo sport watch and timed this search.  To me it felt like 10 minutes, so it was probably less than five.  One thing about Gimme, she never gives up...  I purposely wanted a really difficult search, resulting in success.  By comparison, the trial searches will be easy-peasy...