I meant to tell you, but figured yesterday's entry was long enough...
I have figured out how to read Gimme in containers when she is faced with food distractions. I know I said before that the big difference was with odor she sticks the container and with food distractions she doesn't stick. I also had noted that she was more nosey with food distraction and more pawing with odor.
Since then I have seen an evolution. She is sticking to food distractions and sometimes leaving odor. There are three things that she does when she has odor...
sniff intently
paw at source
look at me
With a food distraction, she certainly sniffs intently and sometimes paws, but doesn't look at me. The look is her "hey, pay up Mom" expression. When its distraction, she's just busy trying to get to it. I've been rewarding the look a bit more in containers and she's starting to do it before pawing part of the time.
I also discovered that her reaction to Anise is weaker than her reaction to Birch and that she doesn't stick Anise as well. If there is one of each, she almost always indicates the Birch first and then Anise. A recent exception would be the search I set up at Home Depot (see entry Damned Hard Hide). In that case, the Anise hide was the easiest of the three - so it makes sense that she would find/indicate it first.
I mentioned this preference for Birch to Joyce and she said that she'd been hearing that at instructor trainings over the last year and they think its because the dogs have a much longer reward history with Birch than with Anise. I can't believe she's been hearing this in instructor trainings for a year, but hasn't been watching for it in class, designing exercises to address it and hasn't even considered it important enough to cover for the two of us who are trialing. <sigh>
In any case, this becomes another thing I have to work on. My plan is during practices to set up mostly Anise hides and reward them heavily. At least for awhile, until we build up a good reward history. She'll get enough Birch in class. Later when we add Clove, I guess we'll have to do the same thing there.
Tonight I had to run to Target to get a battery for my new Jumbo Sport Watch, which had already died - fortunately the battery was indeed the issue (I'm writing to the sellers, since it certainly ought to last more than 2 weeks). I also bought a nice "cube" cooler, with a really tight fitting lid to keep my odor things in. I notice that when I pick up the box I've been keeping them in, that I can smell it. So I'm sure Gimme smells it too and pretty much all the time she is in the car - which can't be a good thing.
When I got home I set up two simple searches, with two sources and both Anise. Gimme found them very quickly and thoroughly enjoyed all the cheese and celebrating for her efforts. So much so that when I put it all away, she took to whining and fussing because the fun was over so quickly.
A funny thing happened - for the second search I put one of the hides in the bathroom trash, in a shotgun shell wad holder. Gimme went in and stuck her head in the trash but didn't indicate or stick to it. Then she kept going in and out of the bathroom, without paying attention to the trash again. She kept turning and looking at me like I was more-than-slightly-stupid. I cued her "show me" and she finally went over and paid some attention to the trash basket, so I rewarded her for that. Then I got the trash and started fishing around looking for the odor source to put it away. For the life of me I couldn't find it... until I turned around and saw it on the floor right where I'd been standing!!!
It seems she'd retrieved it for me and I had failed to notice. Poor Gimme, saddled with a person who is clearly more-than-slightly-stupid. I hope she knows how much I love her and sees that as a redeeming quality...
Cross your fingers for us...
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