Nosework (2/22)

This class was this week, so now I'm caught up with blogging.  I'm nowhere near being caught up for Christmas.

Container 1 - The first search was a container search outside, with three hides.  It was about 28º, so I was feeling pretty whiny about it.  Gimme didn't seem very focused, gave me a two false alerts and missed one hide.  Dorothy forgot to video, so I don't have anything to look at.  In hindsight we concluded the cold was keeping odor really close to the cans, so there wasn't much scent plume to work with.  Gimme wasn't getting much scent, so she just started alerting any time she did smell odor.

Container 2 video - Our instructions were to take them down the line of luggage and then move on to the containers (boxes) on chairs.  There were no hides in the luggage and 2 in the boxes.  You can see Gimme was initially attracted by the luggage, but then had no interest in it.  She finds the white box hide pretty quickly, but then really struggles to find the red box hide.  The red boxes have extra flaps, so they hold odor in more.  I was confused and thought they were both in white boxes, so when she did find it, I didn't believe her.  Dorothy cut off the video so you don't get to see Gimme get six treats for being so persistent.  Its probably criminal how inept her handler is.

Container 3 video - Two rows of luggage and buckets, with three hides.  The comment "we left those deliberately" refers to two balls on the floor, which Gimme  has been distracted by in the past.  She certainly noticed them this time.  She gets them all, but not as fast as I've come to expect. 

Container 4 video - Again 2 hides in boxes on chairs. Gimme quickly finds the hide in the white box.  It takes her a little longer to find the red box hide and I needed to keep bringing her near it. 

Gimme was not her usual stellar self this evening.  She usually aces her searches, leading the class.  Instead she was having more trouble in the hard parts than her classmates.  She was tending to get "distracted" more than usual and initially I thought it was a focus issue.  But then I realized its probably related to the antibiotics she's getting for an anal sac infection.  She was taking antibiotics last week and had no problem, which is why I initially discounted the impact.  Then it occurred to me, there's been a switch to a different antibiotic since then.  She'll be on this one for another two weeks.

BTW expressing her anal sacs and antibiotics haven't been enough to get this under control.  So Wednesday morning she had to be sedated so they could flush her anal sacs and fill them with an antibiotic gel.  Please do pray this does the trick.  Otherwise it may become necessary to have them surgically removed - which, like all surgery, is risky.