Thinking they might forget and not have practice boxes available for Gimme after all the anise and clove searches, I decided to set up three boxes for her in the living room before driving over to the test. The first time she assaulted all the boxes without even checking, but finally settled on destroying the correct one! The second time she again assaulted all three boxes, destroying two (including the correct one)! She really wasn't making any effort to sniff and find the odor.
I set her up two more hides that didn't have boxes and she did much better for those, finding the hides neatly and pawing at them for an indication. I was thinking that since the ORT was going to be in boxes (container search) that it didn't bode well overall, but hoped she would pull it together. I made it a point to get to the site early enough to take her for a nice long walk. Even during the walk I could tell she was mentally all over the place.
She's been hit and miss on focus for a week... and even Wednesday night wasn't as focused as usual at class (though I didn't credit her condition for that at the time). She's two weeks into season, so I think she might have found it if they'd mixed some testosterone into the birch oil... Seriously though, she wasn't flagging when I got home, but has since started, just a few hours later.
I thought it was interesting that Dorothy, the person who hosted the ORT, made the comment that "there must be something going on with that box", saying so many dogs had alerted on it - which makes me wonder if they got a dirty box in the layout. Or, as often happens, a dog will follow where the others went, since they leave a scent trail as they move around. Since Gimme wasn't searching in any intent way, maybe she caught where they'd been and just followed what others had done. She did go by the correct box, but barely paid any notice of it (or any of the others, for that matter).
I was contemplating why I didn't notice this banzai brain in previous seasons, so went back and checked what was going on. During her first one she was just finishing a 6 week rally class during the first week of the season and had several weeks off before we started other classes. That first time she had a false pregnancy which presented some unexpected challenges in our classes with Ursula until we figured out what was going on. She didn't have a false pregnancy last time. The second season she was a few weeks into nosework class, but at that point she was still finding food in open boxes. So this is the first time she has been presented with anything particularly challenging.
Clearly in the future we won't schedule anything during her seasons, even if it is a sport that allows us to play. Fortunately she has proven to be on a very regular six month cycle, so it'll be easy to predict from now on. Her first season started on April 20th, 2011, and the third season on April 21st, 2012.
There is another ORT in Sumner next month, so I'll get us entered and hopefully the fourth time will be a charm. Its killing me that my girl with all this raw talent can't get past a freakin' ORT...
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