Nosework (2/11)

I really must get some of this caught up.  Its been so long now, I don't remember a lot of details - at least I made the diagrams soon after class.  

This was held July 14th.  The first two searches included the portico for the building's entrance (grey, black squares are columns), with a bench (red) and six chairs (green) in the parking space.  

In keeping with the theme of seeing how the dogs are affected by their expectations regarding familiar items (chairs being high on the list) during the first search we saw the dogs examine the chairs extensively and then examine the bench, before discovering odor on one of the columns.  Gimme was a little faster than the other dogs, but still spent a lot of time on the chairs, but almost none on the bench. 

For the second search, the odor was moved to the bench and one of the chairs.  Gimme headed directly toward where she found odor before, then immediately found the odor on the bench.  From there she caught the drift of where odor was on the chair and found it very quickly. 















The third, fourth and fifth searches were held on the exterior strip at the side of the building.  The bicycles on the sidewalk were laid on their sides.  The green splotches are trees and the larger red circle is a fire hydrant.  You can also see the mailbox and the mulched area of the landscaping. 

The first search in this area had odor under some weeds at the edge of the sidewalk.  All the dogs were really attracted to the bicycles and other "stuff".  Gimme took a long time to find odor where it was.  I noticed she was very distracted, but not by stuff as the other dogs had been.  Before the next search, discovered she needed to poop, so I'm sure this was the reason.  A good Mommy would get there early enough to have a lengthy walk before class starts.




 
For the second search Gimme got down to business better and was more focused.  It still took her awhile to find odor in a hose nozzle in the middle of the grass.  Once she did, she went directly to odor on the bicycle hub. 

 





 








For the last search, odor was in a pipe on the ground in the grass, on a tree and on the fire hydrant.  Gimme found both the one on the hose and the one on the tree pretty quickly.  Then she seemed to get a tiny bit stuck on the mailbox.  The tree and hydrant hides were converging odor and I think there was odor pooling against the post of the mailbox.  Once she eliminated the mailbox pool, she went directly to the hydrant.  




Overall I thought she did very well.  These were unusual searches, more like element trial searches.  And given my own distracted state, I didn't give her much help.  She is always happy to take over and run things according to her own standards...

  ☺