Nosework (5/29)

Gimme is showing she is coming out of her false pregnancy, so I decided to try the first search without pairing. She was a little slow to get started, but once she got going she did well. Dorothy found a lot more stuff to attach to the wall. Again, it's harder than it looks because of the way the expen-wall affects the movement of scent.

Interior 1 video - It takes Gimme to 40 seconds to find the first hide, but then she starts going faster. The second hide took under 15 seconds, then about 35 seconds to the third hide. She gets a bit too food focused (starting right after she mugs me) and instead of working the odor, starts poking everything with her nose trying to get the food. The fourth one seems to be a bit of challenge, but then she nails it. After it, she goes a bit far from the "wall" and while Dorothy wanted me to bring her in closer, I didn't. I know Gimme and she has a history of working out to the edge of odor and then coming back in, which is what she does here. Her line from the "neverland" to the fifth hide was really direct. Then she re-finds one, before getting to number six. If you watch carefully at the beginning of the video, Gimme did note it early on, but walked it. Dorothy suggests we work our way down the near side of the wall on the way out - which I was happy to do and Gimme found 3 more.

Interior 2 video - Gimme races from the start line right to the first hide - just 2 seconds. I don't know why she took me back to the first one, but I gave her a piece of cheese (not chicken nugget) for it. Then she goes directly to her second hide. Her work to the third hide was nice and clean. It was interesting that she took me back up the line to find the one she'd just passed (the fourth). She pushes further up the wall, almost to the first one. When I restrict her line a little, she turns right around and shows me number five. The tuna sized can blocked by the chair presents a lot of challenge. And then the small tin behind the other chair was hard too. She re-finds a couple hides and then we finally find the last hide. I move my body next to the expen wall to create another wall, which will sometimes block the movement of scent, concentrating it more in the area. It's not really a useful tactic at a trial where you don't know where the hide is, but it can be helpful in training.

Interior 3 video - For the last search the dogs got to run it off leash. I found it interesting how she completely runs down the expen-wall, scanning the setup. She finds this in 15 seconds. She was much faster finding 8 hides in 2:05. In general I think she's a lot faster without me holding her back; she certainly was here.

Gimme isn't obsessing about her baby any more, though she is carrying a toy around a lot and playing with them. I don't think of it as the baby, since its not the same one. At first she was mothering about six toys at a time, though she'd bring as many as ten of them to bed. The number of bed-babies gradually went down until we got to 1. After another week, she lost interest in the platypus baby, and now is focused on a different toy each day.

Since she's almost entirely back to "normal", so I'm eager to see how she does in class this week.