After teaching agility, I let Gimme have a
play session with Sadie (boring old BC)
and Izzybella (young Beardie). Normally
I wouldn't let her play where I expect her
to work at other times, but for now this is
the priority so I'm willing to bend the rules,
knowing I'll have work to do later. Sadly I
don't have enough friends with appropriate
dogs for her to interact with, so I especially
treasure these opportunities.
It was a good session and I see Gimme
improving all the time. At one point she
did get mad at Izzy (a very rough playing
girl) and the flash of anger was quite
obvious, but it very quickly passed. I
could have missed it, it was so brief.
Later even Sadie played with her for
about a minute and then gave a clear
cut-off signal, which Gimme instantly
accepted, going back to play with her
Izzy-buddy.
After that I did a few errands, then
headed to Elma for some agility 
watching (hence the pictures). Elma
is a really great place to do this
because its not as crowded. Since
Gimme has just come out of season,
I used one of the side doors that let us
get into the stands on the far side
without being near any dogs - just in
case there was any residual odor.
Gimme did very well and was more
relaxed compared to other times. We
watched for well over an hour and she
did well the whole time. Of course she's
convinced she could start out at the top
level in agility. Another way I knew that
she was more relaxed is that she didn't
sleep on the way home as she usually
does.
our first session introducing scent
discrimination, using Altoid tins. I saw it
demonstrated on Denise Fenzi's blog.
What she showed seemed so simple
that one of today’s errands was to go to Costco and buy a 12pack of Altoids. I guess I’ll have great breath for awhile now.
Denise’s puppy had already been doing a lot of retrieving and I haven't worked that very much with Gimme (my bad). I started just praising her and letting her eat the food out of the tin for any interaction, then gradually waited for more. Within just 2:45 she was picking up the tin. With a little quick action on my part, she was mostly dropping it in my hands. The original video was eight and a half minutes, but Gimme pushed the tin under the couch, so I cut out the sizable portion of time that it took to retrieve it. On the very last one, the little sneak managed to drop it out of range of my hands and it popped open and she got some of the treats. Fortunately there were enough left for her to end by dropping it in my hands one last time. You can see the tail never stopped wagging. She really does love to train me...
4 comments:
I had to go into town today and tried to find a multi-pack of Altoids and was unable to do so. Wesley has been retrieving an Altoids tin since he was about 10 weeks old but now I want to work with more tins as in Denise's blog. I bought 2 three packs of travel toothbrush holders at the Dollar Store which I can use to start the scent discrimination until I find tins. I know he doesn't mind the metal in his mouth. I love your videos from Friday and the pictures of Gimme in the stands at the agility trial.
I got a 12 pack of Altoids at Costco for about half what it would cost to buy them at a grocery store. I've been told you can get a multi-pack at Walmart as well. Also there was a link in a recent digest of the clicker obedience list for where you could buy tins online. I only took a moment to check it out and the prices seem very reasonable, but didn't look far enough to see if there is a minimum order. The link is: http://www.specialtybottle.com/hingedtincontainersmi.aspx
People around here don't like using the Altoid tins as they do retain the scent of the Altoids. You can get really nice, small tins this time of year at Joann's Fabric stores in their Christmas section. They have had nothing in them, so don't carry an extra scent.
Denise Fenzi said she washes hers in a dishwasher and that seems to remove the scent. Though I'm sure that starting with something completely clean is a good idea too.
JoAnns is a good idea - hadn't thought of that.
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