Nosework (2/9)

Class was all about vehicles.  We did seven searches on vehicles, one hide at a time.  Gimme did well.  She still sometimes gets distracted by things nearby, but nothing like what we were dealing with before.  Now I can call her away from them and she responds pretty quickly.  As much as she uses a vigorous paw whack as her indicator on many of her hides, when she is doing vehicles - its a gentle paw touch, which is nice to see.  We can get a fault assessed if its vigorous on a vehicle.

 I was feeling nervous about containers - since that is what we failed last time and so asked Joyce to run me & Gimme and Susan & Tucker through a quick container search.  Good thing too, since little Miss, went straight to goof-off mode.  She did a quick indication on a couple boxes that weren't it, but fortunately I knew what to look for.  When she got to the right one, there was nothing quick about it - she went straight into box destruction mode.  She hadn't been doing that as much lately and I admit I like seeing it.  Its just so Gimme...   BTW in her defense, she had just done seven separate searches, so she was probably a bit tired. 

Joyce also showed us a training trick for teaching the dogs to eat the treats from our cupped hand - so there is less risk of dropping treats at a trial.  Dropping even a tiny crumb in the search area will get a fault assessed against you, so its to be avoided.

Basically you just feed the dog many treats, one after the other, from a cupped hand and the other hand places treats in that hand.  If the dog pays any attention to the hand holding the treats - they get nothing.  When they focus on the cupped hand - treats magically appear there.  Its really easy to teach and dogs pick it up quickly.  Gimme thought that was just about the most fun she's had all week.  Tomorrow while I'm at my parents', I'm going to practice doing it with her harness and line, since you aren't supposed to drop the line either. 

Today I was reading an article about children and self-control, based on the "marshmallow test".  Just thinking of marshmallows got me curious about how Gimme would react to them,  bought a bag today.

The first one I gave her, she kept dropping - not knowing quite how to eat it, but then decided it was wonderful.  I turned the next one into four pieces and she gobbled them down like they were food of the gods.  Later I gave her another whole one and she devoured it immediately.  I think I could buy the small ones and use them now and then as nosework treats. I realize they aren't healthy like the other stuff I feed her, but she was very excited and clearly that is very high value.  That seems to be the norm across species for junk food. 

Well cross your fingers... the weekend is almost upon us.  Gimme is still in season, so we'll wait all day and then do all our searches one after the other at the end of the day, while wearing her patriotic red, white and blue striped britches.  I'm packing up tonight so I can leave right after I teach class in the morning.  I'll thank you to cross any body part you can spare for us...

BTW that article is: "Marshmallow Study Revisited: Delaying Gratification Depends as Much On Nurture as On Nature", has some fascinating applications to dog training.  It is available at:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011090655.htm