Nosework (5/27)

Videos are all poor quality due to insufficient light.

Exterior 1 video - If you recall, last week Gimme got off a squirt of urine where another dog had peed during an exterior search, which I didn't see. I was concerned Gimme might decide my lack of response to her squirt meant the rule no-peeing-while-searching had changed.  She is inclined to take single instances as a rule change. Since we have two nosework trials in the near future and I was afraid she might not be clear on our rules, her decision to pee 31 seconds into our search was actually a very good thing. My, "Uhhh, what have you done? Shameful..." is more harsh than usual, but I wanted to communicate a very clear message. This ended the search, which is also part of the clear message.  I have to admit I never thought I'd be happy to have her pee during a search.

Exterior 2 video - At 1 minute into the video, Gimme suddenly slipped into heel position, right after she'd been showing some unease as we approached the area where she'd peed before. Dorothy called it "appeasing" behavior, not a bad assessment. In reality, I think Gimme chose to move into heel, where the nothing-bad-ever-happens-in-heel-position rule takes affect. She wanted to tell me she was being good; her way of saying "message received". You gotta love the beautiful simplicity of this two-way conversation, my earlier verbal and her reply. As we left the area of her prior mistake, she caught odor and confidently moved ahead of me, going right to work. Timing couldn't have been more perfect. She got a whole nugget for her especially nice work. From there she went quickly to the other hide. It was a great search. 

Exterior 3 video - It only took Gimme three seconds to find the first hide and Dorothy hadn't gotten the record button pushed. She then went up the sidewalk and turned toward the next hide, without getting near the baaaadd area. I sort of swung her through it and then let her go back toward the hide and get rewarded. I don't want her to develop a "thing" about that area, so I want to get her into it as needed. After the second hide she went toward the first one she found and then used it to bounce to her third hide, about 12 feet away.

Vehicle 1 - no video - Dorothy sometimes has difficulty hitting the right button on my camera and here she did it again, missing Gimme's extremely fast search in its entirety. She only noticed the issue after Gimme found both hides. Gimme searched, found the first one, got rewarded, continued around and found the second one and got rewarded in about 20 seconds. Not sure you could have seen anything on the first hide, since it was complete blackness in the side away from the streetlight. Gimme was rocking.