Nosework (6/9)

Just came home from nosework class.  I gave Gimme a Kong with peanut butter inside.  Apparently not enough PB, because she keeps bringing it to me and dropping it noisily beside me - hinting....

Dorothy set up a layout to create some really good searches. 

The pink dots are odor with the letter above it indicating its relative height.  L was floor level behind a table leaning against the wall; M was about 3' off the ground on a porous divider; and H was 4.5' high on another porous divider.  The red rectangle is a rolling cart and the blue rectangle is a step aerobics platform and the green c's are chairs.  The tan and black circles are stools and for the first search Dorothy was sitting on the tan stool.  It was interesting to note all the dogs clearly showing us the perimeter of the High hide with changes of behavior (the grey half-circle).  They all got the hides in order of low, medium and high. 

A couple other dogs got to the High hide faster, but their owners were actually helping them with their own movement and proximity and a few of them paid for any indication the dog was looking up at all.  Gimme was the most advanced of the dogs there tonight and I purposely acted like I didn't know where it was, and just mirrored Gimme with my movement and waited for her to solve it.  She paid a lot of attention to the clock above the closest green chair.  From the way the dogs acted, the odor was drifting over to pool on the nearest chair.  The only thing I did to help Gimme was to pull the chair out away from the wall and this was enough for her to decide it wasn't the clock.  Then she figured out where it was and we had a big party.  I was very proud of her for sorting it out on her own.

For the second search the hides were moved out into the room, but still low, medium and high.  The tan stool was high, with the hide on the underside of the seat.  The medium height hide was on the inside of one of the red rolling cart supports.  And the low hide was on the lower part of the leg for the black stool.

Gimme quickly found the high and medium height hides, but she went round and round and round for the low one.  She had her head up in the clouds and even though she went by the black stool a couple of times, she just wouldn't get her nose down near the ground to find it.  She's always had a tendency to want to search high-headed.  I thought the big party (and a large glob of PB) we had for solving the high hide in the prior search made her think I wanted her looking up.  So when she finally did get her nose down and find the low hide, she got a very large glob of PB.  Her mouth was so glued shut with it, she had a hard time walking!

Dorothy likes to end class with a simpler hide, especially if there were tough challenges on earlier searches.  She feels it keeps the dogs' enthusiasm high.  So this last search was one hide under the seat of the tan stool.  It was easy-peasy and Gimme nailed it quickly. 

Good thing we had class tonight, since Gimme has been bored.  I have to transition my accounts to Father's Day, so it makes for long days and no energy left in me when I get home.  Miss Gimme finally realized no matter how many times she drops her Kong on my foot (its the extra large size - ouch!), its not going to get refilled tonight.  Thus, she has settled down under the desk for a snooze.