Last Monday, I taught my second Canine Nose Work class.
It's getting fun, and my co-teacher (Linda) and I have plans to take it up another notch!
Our class contained nearly all the same dogs, who I'll mention during the diary - the only missing 'pup' was Zeke. I learned after class that he'd torn an ACL, would be going in for surgery the next morning, and is facing several weeks of rehab.
:( Poor Zeke. I didn't know that during the class though - and we all had a lot of fun!
After week one's class, I realized that I'd failed to go over the goals for the class - so for week 2, I made up a poster with the goals from week 1 on one side (we reviewed them) and the goals for week 2 on the other side (before we worked on them.)
A review of week 1 - more than half the dogs were focused on their owners, rather than the game; 2 dogs thought the game was pretty fun, and 2 dogs were quite intimidated by the cartons.
Week two I discussed the NACSW a little more, and about the first step in Nose Work Competition - the Odor Recognition Test (ORT.) Before a dog can participate in a Nose Work Trial, he or she must find one carton (of 12 vented cartons that are alike) which contains the target scent: Birch for NW1, Anise for NW2 or Clove for NW3.
We moved pretty quickly on to the rounds of work. We ran two searches for each dog in two rounds and one search for each dog in the last - some went quick, others took a little longer.
Round 1, the owners hid the reward, and Linda held the leash. When a dog is working the scent around the boxes, the leash stays loose - the only way the leash becomes taut is if the dog leaves the area around the cartons - we limit the environment by keeping the dog near the cartons.
This went pretty well, and the two dogs that had been quite concerned (and more) about the cartons - the Golden Maggie and Sheltie Nutmeg - were more into the game, on week two. :) They weren't crashing through cartons in the way, but they were more secure about the whole thing.
Rounds 2 & 3 the dogs were distracted by the handler while the hides were placed, and then released from their leashes. This changes the game... we're going to do that, a lot. The only exception here was Bargo, the Lab - he has some reactivity issues - they'd thought before last Monday that it was caused by being on leash (definitely worsened by a tight leash) - but he was still reacting to the Mastiff (pup) when off leash. That's something that Linda and Bargo's owner are going to work on.
In Round 3, I added 4 construction pylons to the search (the hide was still in the cartons - in the next couple of weeks, I'll move the hide into things other than cartons.)
My favorite find was during the last round, and was by the Sheltie. She was walking through the cartons and and pylons, and sticking her nose from left to right, to catch the scent. The hide was in a box, inside a bigger carton. She was about half way past the larger carton, when she turned her head to the left, and delicately set the end of her nose on the carton and took a big whiff.
Bingo.
It took her a few seconds to figure out where to get to the opening to her reward, but the alert for the find was just awesome.
Tomorrow night is week three's class; I'd also like to thank everyone who provided suggestions for my Nose Work website. I agree with those who think a photo-heavy home page would be good; unfortunately, I don't have many (any?!) nose work photos that I could use, yet... I have grabbed a few 'nose shots' and done some editing - but hopefully before the session, we'll have a professional photographer in for a class. :)
I forgot to mention how Linda and I are going to up the ante. Most of the handlers are using (fairly to nearly) high level rewards - but they aren't thinking about a dog pulling that treat out of a carton. Two handlers are using ham - one is using strips of slices, and the other using tiny cubes - both are difficult to pull from a carton, even with opposable thumbs! Some are using slices of hot dog, cheese... That clicked for the mastiff owner last week - she was using 1/2 a strip of string cheese! Woot!
Linda and I are bringing in 1 inch cheese cubes, slices of steak, chicken cubes, etc. We will use (with the owner's permission) our treats for the hides - the owner's treats for reward at source - and see how that goes. I anticipate that it will go very well.