Nosework (3/7)

Before I start, this was our last week of classes with Ursula. She wasn’t able to get the format and training booklet for the CGC class finished in time for us to continue on without interruption. If we skip even one week, then the ten weeks would end after the holiday season gets going and I would be too busy to reliably attend classes. So we won’t be back in classes with her until next spring. We’ll miss them. Meanwhile we are checking out a group agility class to see if it’s a good fit for us.

This week we had nosework class on Thursday morning because of a family event the night before. Gimme did great as always.

We met in the big rear parking lot of a local Lowes. The first two hides were a container drill. I'm proud to say that Gimme only indicated the correct box and did so with great speed even though we had a pretty stiff breeze going. Maybe she just enjoys having more of a challenge. I have to admit a big part of me misses Demolition Gimme -- though I know with certainty that she WILL find some other way to be entertaining, doncha know.

The third and fourth hides were in the landscaping islands. The hides were: under some wood chips, tucked in under the edge of a boulder, on the concrete base of a light pole tucked under a leaf and under a piece of broken concrete. Gimme did a great job with those too. She seemed to be all about efficiency this day.

I’m happy to say that she didn’t mark when she was searching on areas that gave her opportunity. She actually hasn’t marked since the match three weeks ago. I hadn’t intended to give her a leash correction or blurt out "no" when she marked then, it just happened. At the time Gimme gave me a stink eye. Time will tell if it made a lasting impression – so far so good.

Joyce instructed me to do no other nosework between then and our trial tomorrow. I’ve been concentrating on ways to make sure she stays comfortably cool and relaxed in the car. I do think that is why she didn’t do as well at the last search of the match two weeks ago – just too hot and tired and that impacted her focus.

I went out to the garage to get my battery operated fans and they, the batteries and the charger had "disappeared". I guess someone needed them more than I do. Clearly I have to get a new key for the garage and get back to locking it up again. I bought a new fan and charger set for Gimme from Home Depot. I’ve also installed reflector panels in the back side windows of the car and am cutting one today for the hatchback (to be held up with velcro). I’ll have one really big one that I can put on top of the car. I’m also doing the finishing touches on some white mesh panels that I can hang over the open windows and I’ll hang sheets around the back of the hatchback too. Not only am I going for cool, but also a bit of seclusion so she can rest well.

Yesterday I went to Auburn to volunteer for the Nosework 3 trial and it was very interesting. Nosework 1 is pretty simple, level 2 gets harder and level 3 is like real scent detection work. Because it takes so long to do the searches at level 3, they can only trial 20 dogs in a day, versus 45 in level one and two (thus the entry fees are higher). They do random draw to determine who gets in at level 1 and 2… level 3 entry is based on how long its been since the dog passed level 2. The pass rate at level 3 is about 1 in 7, many dogs take a lot of attempts to get there. Keep in mind, the dogs must pass each element all on the same day and not have too many cumulative faults to get a title.

There are food and toy distractions and the odor challenges (birch, anise and clove) are sometimes hidden in spots where there is less scent escaping. Also all the elements require the handler to call "finished" and since the handler doesn’t know how many there are, they need to really read the dog. The interior element has three separate rooms, one of which may be without any odor in it – so the handler has to be able to read the dog and call "clear" if they have a room without odor. The judges have that information and are watching for it, so if the dog’s indication is different than what you wrote and you call alert, even if you are correct, you can be assessed a fault. Many of the judges they recruit come from the detection field.

I got to watch about half of the container drills. They don’t use boxes after you get past level 1… instead its mostly suitcases, backpacks and some other containers. In this case, in addition to the suitcases and backpacks, they had an odd shaped cardboard mailer, some new paint cans with holes in the top and several wooden boxes with holes in the top. In addition to the hides, there are food and toy distractions in some of the containers. A few of the dogs were really attracted to the oatmeal cookie distraction. A false alert is the kiss-of-death, so handlers at that level really have to be able to read their dog and know when they are working odor versus when they are after something else.

I also watched the corresponding half of the exterior searches. Most of the dogs seemed to do really well there, though there were a few false alerts. A couple dogs were attracted to the air conditioning unit. Made me wonder if it was blowing air out, in which case it could have been emitting weak odor from the interior search rooms. The handlers that called alert there had dogs with indicator styles that are open to interpretation, like the dog-looks-at-handler that some people are using. Many handlers don’t seem to have a clear idea of when their dog is working and when they are just coming along for a walk, so they are late in calling "finished" which affects their time.

I was timer for the vehicle search and that was educational too. Even though from where I sat I couldn’t see much, there were still things to see and learn. I noticed the handlers that kept moving, even when their dog was detailing an area had cleaner alerts. This was very late in the day and a couple of dogs were just too hot to work effectively; some handlers were clearly tired too. One lady would have had the fastest time by six seconds, but after finding the third hide (the handler knows they are done because there are never more than three) started to walk away without calling "finished", so she pushed her time up by another thirty seconds before she caught herself. The judge said he had known people to walk away and forget entirely and in that case the time runs until they are over time and despite finding all the hides correctly, they still fail the element (and lose the title that day). Many people upon calling their third "alert" and getting the "yes" from the judge, proceed to reward their dogs and only afterward think to say "finished". They could save about ten seconds on their time if they said "finished" the moment the judge says "yes" and it wouldn’t impact their ability or timing to reward the dog. That’s a multi-tasking issue.

The other big problem in vehicles was that handlers loose track of where they are in the set of vehicles and so they miss areas. Keeping in mind that the scent is strongly affected by the wind or lack thereof (really variable direction and speed this day), its important to know which vehicles you have been around and in which approach direction. Sometimes the dog will go one way and not catch the odor and then approaching from the other direction, they home right in on it. Many of the failures in vehicles were people that lost track of where they were and called "finished" before they’d found the last hide, while still having plenty of time.

This business of not keeping the search area and where you’ve been and from which direction in your head was also an issue in containers. One of the hides was in the handle of a brown suitcase on the outer edge of the search area. For some reason, many dogs didn’t scent it until they walked outside that suitcase and most of them (except 2 out of 10) didn’t do that unless their handler moved outside with them. So if the handler didn’t know where they’d been with their dog, they could miss that entirely and a couple did. One person missed a group of four containers repeatedly, fortunately the odor wasn’t in one of them, unfortunately she had a false alert on the oatmeal cookie.

It was very clear that having a clean and precise indication style on your dog is very important. Most of the errors in calling alert came with dogs that had that look-at-handler style. Level 3 is much more handler dependent than 1 and 2. Level one is mostly about the dog, probably 95%. Level two is a mixture. With the exception of resisting distractions and somewhat more subtle hides, the dog’s job doesn’t change. At level three, its at least 90% handler knowing and reading the subtleties of the dog’s behavior and having your own job clear in your head.

Although it was hot and I was really tired on the drive home, it was a great day and I learned tons by watching.

Tomorrow is our first trial in this sport. I’m already very nervous and will, for sure, be taking Rescue Remedy along – for me. Please cross every body part you can spare for us.