We had to switch nosework class to this morning so I could go to my Dad's 84th birthday party last night. Then at noon Gimme had her Targeting and Shaping class.
In nosework we did a field trip to Shopko and Gimme did her usual stellar job. The first session was three hides set up in a corner of the building. One was set up on the ground in the inside corner and she went directly to that. Corners like that can be hard since many dogs round them off. Then we found the second one in a nook on the building's old air conditioning unit. The third one was stuck up about three feet on the wall, tucked behind a bit of conduit. All the dogs, except Joyce's Mick, had difficulty finding that - probably because it was right next to the open corner of the building, so the breeze was blowing past it really quickly. There was a cement post about a foot past the open corner and the odor was pooling against it, so all our dogs kept looking all over that and they each took awhile to turn around and find it right behind them. Mick went past it once, caught the pool and immediately turned right around to source.
The second series was three hides on the back deck landing - on the base of a grocery cart, the edge of a box roller thingy and behind a concrete post near the gate. Joyce set these one at a time for Gimme - since we are entered in a trial next weekend. Gimme found the grocery cart and box roller hides very quickly. The one behind the concrete post proved a little more challenging. Even still she had all three within 3 minutes.
Next we did four hides in one of the docking bays. On a railing, under the axle of a truck, in a pipe coming out of a wall and in a spot under the docking lip. Gimme found the one in the pipe first, though she kept sniffing around the docking lip (residual odor from the other dogs). Our next one was under the truck axle and Gimme was more interested in the fried chicken skin and a bit of bones. I tried to keep her from them, but she managed to snag the bones and so I grabbed her and took it away. After that she wouldn't go under the truck again - having attached that "correction" to the truck, not the chicken snatching. I encouraged her and then she did go under the truck and found the next hide very quickly. She found the others in order almost as fast as I'd let her go for them.
Our last hide was a single black q-tip in a crack in the concrete. Gimme first checked two small pieces of trash and then went right to the q-tip and pawed at it. I thought she went to the trash based on visual. Joyce said she may have, but her line from the second piece was direct to the odor - so she probably caught some odor pooling against it.
In Targeting and Shaping, Gimme actually did better than I expected. She's usually kind of mentally wiped out after nosework. Expecting that we were careful in giving her challenges that were a bit easier on the scale of things she is learning. So overall, she did pretty well.
I have arranged for a test drive of a group agility class on the 21st of this month. We'll see if she is ready for a group setting and if so, will be signing up for what will be roughly every other week. I'm looking forward to it.
BTW it doesn't look like I can download the video's from last weekend's match. Thus far I've only been able to find the same two that I have already loaded here. If I find the others, then I'll put links to them in one of the blogs.
The yard beckons...
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