Spectacular -- Something...

We came away from the weekend with both a spectacular failure and a spectacular success.  Our drive down along the Willamette River was beautiful and I successfully managed to miss the deer that tried so hard to become roadkill.  Gimme was not impressed with my efforts and thinks "swerving" for any reason should be deemed a no-no.  Our hotel room (Motel 6) in Bend was nice and the quietest so far.  I'm a devoted Motel 6 fan.

We had a really nice training session in the evening and again the morning.  Gimme and I continue to work on moderating her paw indicator.  Poor girlie is still scratching because of the dang fleas from 2 weeks ago.  I havent' seen a flea on her in over a week, but she still seems very itchy.  I'm going to get some conditioning shampoo and will try Ttouch.  During the evening we found the perfect place to get in a warm-up practice run before going to the trial site - which we did first thing in the morning.

While we did not title and had a lot of problems (finding only 4 out of 9 hides)... I'm trying to not feel too bad.  Not one person titled yesterday - out of 34 competitors.  There were many lessons learned and so I have plans to improve our performance.  We were not assessed any faults for excessive pawing, another success.

Vehicle Element - I was most worried about this element, because its the one that tripped us up for the last two trials.  There was a humvee and two trailer rigs (from 18 wheelers) in very strong wind.  I needn't have worried.  Gimme was focused, fast and accurate.  She nailed the first hide and then boom, hit the second.  It felt like a minute to me, so I knew it had to be around 30 seconds.  I've learned my sense of time is skewed and I generally find it took half as long as I thought it did.  

So given how fast I thought she was, I was pretty surprised when they called the first, second and third place ribbon times.  I was just certain she was faster than the third place dog who had 49 seconds.  When I got her time sheet it said 32 seconds, so I approached the trial secretary and asked about it.  Turns out there was an issue that the computer did not assess our points.  I'm guessing it was because of some minor data entry problem - like a <space> that wasn't supposed to be there.  I've done a lot of data entry and that is the most common and hardest to find of all data entry problems.  

So, they are going to have to retrieve all the ribbons, because by the time this was resolved most people had already left.  We'll get our ribbon in the mail and our placement will show up correctly when the trial results are posted.  I feel badly that the competitors who already received the ribbons will be getting notices today that their awards were invalid.  But, I don't feel badly enough to have not said something, eh...

I have to note that Gimme has had a placement in all but her first NW1 trial.  When she is good, she is very good.  We are clearly on the right path and things will come together soon.  Yesterday's first place was a sweet victory, especially given how frustrating the other elements were.

Exterior Element - This was a large exterior area, mostly on asphalt with a small grass strip on one end and on part of the start side.  The area had a number of things brought in - two banquet tables (one set up and the other flat on the ground), 2 grills, a cart of junk and a couple other things I've forgotten.  The wind was very strong.  Gimme wanted to go straight ahead off the startline, so I let her.  She worked the area along the upwind side and settled on the upright banquet table and alerted strongly there, twice.  It was a false alert.  The judge showed us the nearest hide, about ten feet away deep in a bucket of metal fittings inside the cart.  He said she got fooled by pooling odor - which made no sense to me because the wind was blowing strongly from the false alert toward the odor.

I later talked to the Certifying Official and he remembered Gimme and had many complimentary things to say about her, my handling and our teamwork.  Love hearing that.  There were teams still running that element, so he couldn't say too much, but did confirm that it was a pooling odor issue - which still didn't make sense to me.  After thinking about it I had an idea that I went back and asked him about and that clarifies everything and leads me to a training plan between now and the next trial.

Pooling odor doesn't make sense for the conditions observed at the time, but those conditions may not have been present for the whole time odor was out.  By the time we searched odor had been out at least 2 hours and possibly longer, so there could have been times of less wind with more swirling possibilities, thus odor could have been trapped on the fittings under the table.  I have always thought of trials as having the potential to be easier for the dogs because the odor is out so much longer than what we see in class and practices, so there is a larger odor plume for the dogs to work with.  That is true, but I realize now it is equally true that it increases the challenges from pooling odor.  

Gimme has dealt with some pooling odor, but probably not to the extent she found there.  And keep in mind what was said during the Inaccessible Odor seminar - that pooling odor can theoretically be as strong as source odor AND that a dog that is never given the opportunity to access source odor may believe pooling odor is the real deal because its the strongest of what the dog had access to.  So since that was what she found and she hadn't really caught any other odor - Gimme validly believed she was at source.  A handling strategy I will use in the future for outdoor searches is to lead her to the downwind end of the search area right from the startline.  I normally let Gimme take the lead, but this is one good reason to manage at least the beginning of outdoor searches, especially with a strong wind.

The C.O. said he has sole access to a training area and he often sets up hides 24 hours in advance of running them.  He also varies how much odor he puts out, from very little to a LOT.  So Susan and I have come up with a plan for doing just that... probably not 24 hours, but I could set a couple hides first thing in the morning and then we could run them at the end of the work day.  We'll wait until the weather cools, so she can have her dog in the car all day and come right from work.  Joyce overheard us talking and ventured that she would welcome me planning something like that for our classes - so that may also happen.

Interior Element - Our first search in the afternoon was two interior rooms (off leash).  The first was a large classroom like room - just desks and chairs on slick linoleum.  Gimme discovered the slippery properties of that floor early in the day as we were headed through the building to vehicles and again as we were moving from station to station for the afternoon.  She believes that she MUST PULL any time she is wearing her nosework harness, so I had to encourage her to not pull and walk slower.  I was concerned that she might be bothered by the flooring, but she figured it out and did fine.  She wasn't inclined to move to the far wall, so I moved toward it to encourage her and she paralleled me, ending up in that area.  That was indeed the right answer, since I didn't know they had a window open (hidden by the blinds) and odor was moving from a desk along the wall straight out the window.  So until Gimme got between that desk and window, she really had no way to catch the scent.  

The second search area was a workout room.  It was a small room with a lot of workout stuff, no air movement, much residual human smells and very stinky rubber flooring and rubber workout mats.  The room was so small and crowded that only the judge and videographer came in the room.  Gimme did sniff interestedly at a large dumbbell on the floor, but left it quickly - turns out that was one of the odor sources, that we never got back to.  She then got very interested in the top area of a treadmill and alerted strongly there.  That was a false alert and the odor was actually in a stack of mats in a corner four feet away.  

Most dogs had a lot of trouble with this room first and when the element results are posted on line, I'll check to see if anyone passed it.  I didn't talk to anyone that did and keep in mind that no one titled.  I am concerned that Gimme may be experiencing some confusion about going to source following the Inaccessible Hides seminar and when frustrated by challenging conditions may think its okay to settle for odor nearby.  

Keep in mind that her first class after the seminar was a bust because of the drug side affects and so she only had one other class.  Susan and I got together for one practice the Monday after the seminar weekend and neither dog searched with interest - I think Gimme was just too tired.  We never got another practice... so she really only had that one class to remind her of the importance of getting to source after a full day of me accepting her getting kinda close.  I should have been more dedicated to getting her out for practices on my own.  And in the future will think carefully about attending a seminar so close to a trial.  We'll just have to do a LOT of searches in the near future when she has to get right to source to get paid.

Container Element - Gimme started out very well and passed the first two distractions without a problem, finding the first odor container without any issue.  However, the third distraction bag totally sucked her in - turns out it had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in it.  She gave me all the parts of her container indicator - completely lying to me.  We have trained peanut butter as a distraction before, but not recently.  The recommendation is to not just train the things you think will be a big distraction, but a variety of things that you don't know if your dog will be attracted to.  Apparently most failures to distraction in this trial's container element were to the sweet potato french fries.

One thing I'm thinking about is that Gimme was frustrated in the afternoon and while we were waiting had been mugging me for peanut butter.  My reaction was to get someone to take the peanut butter go toob to the car.  In hindsight, I think I should have required her to calm herself and then have given her a big glob of PB to enjoy.  I do know that the big glob is relaxing to her.  Maybe she wouldn't have been sucked in then, but I have no way of knowing.  We'll train more PB distractions and I'm thinking about rewarding with PB for containers as well.  I'll have to play with that.

The next trial is Elmira, but that's a weekend in November when I'll be in California at the Behavior Adjustment Training Instructor's course.  So after that our next opportunity is Clackamas in February.  That gives us a lot of time to work on these newly discovered holes in our training.  

I was really frustrated by our dismal efforts, but the 1st in Vehicles cheers me up and reminds me that we have some skills very solid.  This will come...  If it was easy to title, then the title wouldn't be worth much, eh...

Now Gimme and me are heading out the door to class and then will meet Grafton for a romp on the Fort Lewis training area.