We were supposed to have agility this week, but I killed my car and had no way to get there. Gimme was at home; I was unhurt. The insurance company totaled my old Saturn (sniff - pout) and so now I am hunting for a new car. Meanwhile my friend Linda is driving me the 1 hour trip tomorrow to get to my parents' house; they are loaning me their extra car. Pray that the right car magically finds its way to my attention - soon.
My insurance company messed up, so I had no rental. Long story. I will say I was and am continually blessed to have great friends who pulled out all the stops to ferry me around so I didn't have to miss work. Mary came over twice and picked us up, so Gimme and Grafton could walk with us around Capitol Lake. On Wednesday Mary came by and picked us up for nosework class. We stopped by Lacey Collision and got the crate from the car. After class we dropped by again and cleaned the car out entirely. Geez I sure do manage to accumulate a heap of junk in my car.
Class went well. Gimme did fine, even despite the unusual accommodations - being crated in the back of Mary's SUV with Grafton right there, loose in the seat. I think Grafton thought it was finally a dream come true and that he was going to get to take Gimme home for keeps. Each time it was her turn, he whined when I took her out of the car. BTW the training areas have been closed for about a month - this Sunday is the first time we get to go and the kids will get to run loose together in all that time. I'm certainly looking forward to it; I know they will love it.
Our class consisted first of three container drills - one hide each. Gimme did good, getting faster with each round. Joyce has already started pairing the third level odor (Clove) with her level one (Birch) or level two (Anise). It doesn't take the dogs long to figure out that those odors pay. Gimme still sometimes gets distracted by stuff on the periphery during a container search and I wasn't as effective at reeling her in. Partly I think that is because I'd forgotten to grab her nosework harness and the long line, so I was working with unfamiliar feeling equipment.
Our last search was a series of four chairs and a wheelchair, set in a line, about five feet apart. Joyce set a hide on the first chair... if the dog went past it, we circled back to the beginning and started again. We did an exercise like this during one of our field trips over the summer. When the dog got the first hide, while we were rewarding, Joyce set the next hide on the third chair in the row. We continued our movement down the line and if the dog passed the second hide, we circled back at least one chair and approached again. We repeated that until they found the second hide, and Joyce set the third one on the wheelchair while we were rewarding. The same routine of circling back if they passed or drifted away from it, applied to the third hide.
Gimme got the first hide pretty quickly - just one circle. The second one took three circles. The third one was her scent seeking missile approach to nosework. She was getting steak for the earlier container hides and I switched to a big marshmallow for each hide on the chair drill. I don't know if Joyce's efficiency drill did the trick or if Gimme simply figured out that I was paying with a marshmallow and didn't want to wait.
I asked Joyce why she thought efficiency was so important for us - since Gimme always finishes in plenty of time and I'm sure time won't be an issue for us when we trial for NW2. Joyce agreed that we could probably get by at that level, but said she thought we'd need to be more efficient before NW3 and unless I wanted to train for a year between them, to get ready, I'd be better off to start work on it now. I can't argue with that logic.
No comments:
Post a Comment