Nosework (6/33)

It gets dark so early.

Vehicle 1 search video - There were two blind hides. Paul forgot which button to push on the camera, so the recording starts where I was rewarding Gimme for the first hide. The stuff Gimme went to check after the trailer hide was not part of the search, but she often likes to check other stuff and she's so quick it doesn't impact our times, thus, I don't interfere. It only took her 35 seconds to find the next hide, even with the diversion. From there she went around checking stuff. Part of the checking was re-checking scent drifting from the other hides. She wasn't fooled and since she was not showing any sourcing behavior, I called "finished" and was right. I'm getting better at reading this part of her behavior.

Container 1 search video - The instructor said most dogs missed the hide the first time down the line. Gimme did, but only because she was drawn to the larger visual at the other end of the room. Once she turned back and started checking the containers in the chairs, she got the hide the moment she smelled it.

Container 2 search video - Naturally Gimme thought the ball was very attractive, but left it the moment I said we were playing with it. Even with the ball diversion, it only took her 18 seconds to find the hide. Not sure why she left it the first time, but she realized her error and went back to it quickly. Then just 13 seconds to the second hide.

Container 3 search video - We couldn't be sure why there were three false alerts in a row (other dogs did similarly). I think it may be caused by the drain sucking the scent up the row and it was just her first scent in the search. There's no way to be sure. There were two hides, which she did find. Then we went back up the line so she could find them again.

I suggested moving the containers to the other side and changing the configuration to see how the dogs responded. Since we were running through them so fast, the instructor did set it up.

Container 4 search video - This time Gimme did a really good job. She did want one of the containers to be a hide, but didn't try to convince me too hard. The hides and containers had just been moved over from the other side minutes before and the one container she thought might be promising was the one closest to the hide in the other search. So it stands to reason it had more lingering scent on it.

Overall a good class... Next week the classes split back into two groups and we'll be in the earlier one, so there will be a little bit of light for outside work when we arrive at 6:00 p.m.