Here is the report from last week's nosework class. I have video's and also have a couple of video's from this weekend - so I'm not going to diagram the searches, since you can see what the layout was like.
I have to warn you... the video is awkward in places. Whenever I bend over to reward Gimme, you see my hands, legs and feet, leash, floor - whatever, just no Gimme. Also when the instructor was talking to me, I see in the video I am turned halfway between her and Gimme, so you see stuff. At least the video of Gimme searching is reasonably good. Although its hard to keep the camera on her when she moves so fast - I'm always behind her and when its on leash, I'll be challenged to keep up, since I can't cut across the room.
For the searches, they had put down a line of blue painter's tape about 6 feet from the wall. For the first search we had to stay inside the "box", except when rewarding, and the four hides were all placed in stuff lining the wall. On the video, you don't see her head tilt at the filing cabinet as she notes it to return to it (the only inaccessible hide). She didn't go into the corner and missed the chair entirely on the way down the room. The big long stretch after the instructor tells me to shorten my leash is me waiting for Gimme to finish cleansing her palate (peanut butter sticks her mouth together and she just can't search then). Gimme did a good job overall and I was pleased to see her work the challenges without needing me to help her. Some of the other students are still in the mode of telling their dog where to search by using their body location. So their dogs may have gotten every hide each way, but it was only because the handler knew where the hides were and stopped their dog at each one until they found it. I want Gimme to find them on her own, without clues from me.
For the second search, they moved all the stuff inside the tape and we were to work it with the handler staying on the edge of the room, only crossing the tape line to reward. You may wonder what went on right as the tape starts - I rewarded her without saying anything. Gimme quickly learned saying "alert" means payoff for her and it became a conditioned reinforcer, so a lot of the time I don't say it. You can see on this search it is much harder to keep Gimme in the frame as I am forced to walk down the channel at the room's edge. (this won't usually be the case in our video's) She overran the filing cabinet again - the hides were close together AND there is not usually any reason why she would need to get the hides in any order. Obviously she only gets a tiny smidgen of PB for the first hides in each search, saving the glob for the last one when its not counting against our time. I also tend to use the PB to lure her out of the room and away after the last hide, so they can get on with the next dog while she finishes cleansing her palate.
For our third search, the room remained the same, but the hides were moved along the wall. Sometimes its a good idea to set up searches where the dog doesn't find the hide attached-to or associated-with things. In this search we were not restricted by the tape and able to follow our dog in the normal manner. It was interesting to see how often Gimme went to the stuff and had a bit of difficulty following her nose away from it, even becoming red-cart-obsessed.
Clearly its going to take some effort to get used to keeping the camera pointed toward Gimme.
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