Nosework (6/29)

This week we continued with some more nosework on the expen-walls. Gimme is almost totally back to normal. She was dragging me from the car into the building. It was great to see her searching with her usual focus and to see she had her full wag on.

Interior 1 video - Just one hide and not on the first part of the expen-walls. You'll notice she pays almost no attention to it. She has the hide in 12 seconds. And then we take a quick trip around again - not finding anything else, Gimme wants to check out the rest of the room, but then gets back on the wall and gets rewarded again.

Interior 2 video - This time we were doing this running-bunny style (where the hides get moved around while the search is happening). Gimme finds the first hide in 22 seconds. Because we are doing running-bunny it seems like Gimme missed one when she initially sniffed the area of the second hide, but it was added as we were going around - nailed in 9 seconds. If you watch you'll see she realized Dorothy was at the second hide and she comes back to see what she did. She missed the third hide at first, but then gets it in the second pass. Then Dorothy sneaked in another hide just a few feet away.

Interior 3 video - This time they added hides on the first wall, continued with running-bunny style and Gimme got to search off leash (which she always enjoys). She nails the first hide in 5 seconds! When she comes out of the canopy-pen, she suddenly realizes there is a hide on the first wall (which she raced by initially). You'll see her follow scent away from the hide and then go back toward it, though in this case she has to go around to the far side to source it. While Gimme is looking for the third hide, Dorothy moves the hide on the first wall. It takes Gimme a little longer than usual to find the third hide. This makes sense since the hides are in place a very short time before the dogs start hunting for them, so they don't have time to cook. But as the name suggests, there isn't time for bunny scent to cook when they are on the run and the dog is hunting for them. It's just a bit different as challenges go. From there Gimme goes around and then realizes the hide on the first wall had moved and goes almost right to it. Then she gets another hide on the back of the canopy wall. The last hide is placed on the chair under the canopy. Gimme has already been in there twice, finding only lingering odor, so it takes her awhile to decide to check it again. You can see when she goes under the canopy again, at first she doesn't trust her nose on the chair and starts checking the wall before going back to check the chair, again.

This third search is really interesting to me. I see she rechecks things, but since the hides have moved, this makes perfect sense. Clearly she knows it's moving and so doesn't rule anything out. I've watched it several times, noting the changes of behavior and decision points.

She really was on... I love seeing Gimme have so much fun.