NW2 Match

Yesterday Gimme and I went to a match on the Washington-Oregon border, a two hour drive.  Best friend Linda came along to help with volunteering and see what all this nosework stuff is all about.  Since she's not a dog person - its a mark of true friendship that she's interested enough to devote an entire day to learning more about what I care about.  Even though it was a cold and wet day... we three had fun.

Gimme is in season and had to wear her hot-pants, not that she thinks that is relevant.  She really doesn't pay any attention to them.  One of the judges commented, "don't you know its a fashion faux pax to wear stripes with spots?"  I told her, "If its good enough for Princess Di, its good enough for the Empress of the Cosmos."

Gimme did a fabulous job on three of her elements: vehicle, exterior and interiors.  The great thing about NW2 is that they tell you how many hides there are. You don't know how many there are in NW3.

Vehicle took less than a minute, with no help from me.  The wind was blowing away from us... so she was pretty much just scan-sniffing the vehicles, really staying with them, until she got into a spot where she got a drift of odor - then she went really direct and detailed until she was sure where it was.  Her change of behavior when she was on odor was very clear.  The paw whack was decisive.

Exterior had two hides and covered a very large area, containing 5 park benches, a dozen trees, a trash container and a picnic table and benches, along with miscellaneous other things.  Again, the wind was blowing away from us.  Gimme got down along the far edge of the area right away and headed immediately to the trash can.  She stood up and sniffed in the can and then sniffed the base and found her first odor, again with the very clear paw whack right where it was.  Then she continued to scan the rest of the area and got on the other side of the odor again.  So I took her around to the benches and trees, which got us downwind of the second odor source.  Gimme found that pretty quickly - under the edge of a cover to the lighting electrical unit.  Getting both hides in about 2 minutes.

Interior had two rooms, two hides in the first room and one hide in the second room.  Gimme got the first hide very quickly - it was on the foot to a cabinet.  The rooms were so small that they didn't close the door and the judge stood in the doorway.  Gimme squirted out past her knees and when I called her an instant later, she turned on a thin dime and got right back past those same knees.  That put her in the ideal spot to find the second hide, which was right near the threshold.  I don't remember the exact time... somewhere around one and a half minutes.  I do remember the time on the only hide in the second room - just a smidgen over 16 seconds!  She was on it so quickly, I really didn't have time to get in gear mentally.  Not that it affected Gimme, the Hottie Spottie Dottie.

One thing I noticed about this judge is that every hide she set, other than the trailer hitch, were low, almost on the ground.  Its a good thing I did that little exercise a few weeks ago when I noticed that Gimme was spending all her time trotting around with her nose straight up scanning for odor.

Container was our first element and the one we had trouble with.  And not a surprise at that.  Linda tried to take a video with her phone because someone forgot to bring her camera.  So I'm trying to turn it into a video for you guys to watch, but so far am not having luck with it.

Basically Gimme was caught up by two issues.  One seemed to be converging odor, but the main issue was the food distraction (saltine crackers) in one of the containers.  It was very close to the one hide she did find and so she kept going back to that hide to ski on the bag  - though I really think she was being drawn by the food distraction.  From what I can see on the video, she never even sniffed the second odor container, which was one in from the far left corner - instead she was rounding that corner, though she did hit the far left corner container once.

When I saw she was having difficulty, I should have gotten more involved and given her more direction.  Though in my defense, we've never searched that way - clearly something I need to practice for just this situation.  To a large degree I blame this on lack of adequate training in classes.  We should have been doing a lot more container work and have addressed the food/toy distraction issue long before now.  Gimme isn't distracted by toys, though Tucker (a classmate who is entered in the same trial) is a real toy fanatic.

I did get to talk to a number of people and pick their brains on how to train through the food distraction issue.  What I've been doing isn't bad, but there is an exercise out there that is much more direct to the issue.  Basically you set up a bunch of containers and have food distraction in every one... then further away you have a series of containers, mostly blank and one with a ton of odor in it.  The dog gets to walk through the food distractions and if they alert you ignore it and keep walking - then when they get to the odor container and alert, you reward with the biggest party ever.

Last night I gathered up every bag I could find.  I had a bunch that I'd already started collecting.  I planned to do the exercise after work today and was going to use a covered sidewalk near a vacant office building across the parking lot from my store, but there was a creepy looking guy hanging out in that area.  So I picked another spot and set the 13 bags in a long line.  I put food distraction in the first 8... mostly boring dog cookies, a bit of chicken, kitty kibble and then rice krispie treats in two.  I put the odor in the third of the four bags on the far end.  The line was set up so the breeze was blowing toward us.  We did five searches and I'd read for about ten minutes between searches...

Round 1 - Gimme raced down the line barely sniffing the food and got to the odor bag really fast.  Partly I'm sure it was because I'd just set it up, so the food distractions hadn't had time to really cook.  There were 10 q-tips in the 2 odor tins.  The party was prolonged...

Round 2 - She kept getting distracted off to one side - maybe odor was drifting that way.  This time she paid more attention to the food bags... in particular one that had a rice krispie treat in it.  That one continued to attract her attention.  Again she got to the odor bag quickly and enjoyed her party.

Round 3 - She again was getting distracted off to one side.  Again interested in the rice krispie treat bag.  I'd flipped the odor bag over, so she didn't catch it until she came back toward it from the other direction the second time... the breeze had picked up.  On this round I noticed she was sticking the odor more intensely and naturally we partied.

Round 4 - I moved the bags around a little moving the odor bag between the two bags with rice krispies.  I also moved her along more quickly when she got distracted.  She got all the way to the end of the line and then found odor bag on the way back.  We had a hearty party.

Round 5 - I took one of the odor tins and moved it to the last bag, so she would have two.  She found the first odor bag quickly, we partied.  We went to the end and past the second odor bag... she didn't find it until the third time.  That's probably not surprising, since it hadn't had that much time to cook - at least not compared to the other odor bag.  Again, we partied.

I found that the partying really intensified her stickiness on odor... a very good thing.  I'm trying to do more of that in all our searches.  That's one thing I'd learned from the seminar with Josh McCorkle - that there's more to rewarding than just the food.  I knew that, but hadn't really internalized it, so wasn't actually doing it.

Gimme also seemed okay with being drawn away from distraction and didn't show any signs of frustration.  So, I can start doing that sooner and a bit more directly/forceful in the future.  I think that means she may also be okay with some directed searching... to get her used to the idea for some time when we need it in the future.

I was going to do this every other day... but that would put us on Wednesday and that is our nosework class day.  So I may do a quick session tomorrow.

BTW I had noticed that she never sniffed the first two bags in the line, even though one had that cooked chicken in it.  Those were 2 of 3 bags I'd found in the woods.  I'd washed them when I got them; tonight they are getting washed again.  It'll be interesting to see how she reacts to them tomorrow.  If she continues to pointedly ignore them - they'll find their way into the trash - easy-come-easy-go.