We’ve just done day 1 of a 3 day scent workshop, and it was fascinating - and exhausting! I’ll post more after tomorrow’s session, but in brief(ish),today we covered shaping a nose touch to a scent pot that looked like this:
So we got a reliable nose touch, rewarding under the pot to reinforce the dog’s nose getting the scent, then moving this to a nose touch on the pot on the ground, then in different locations relative to the handler, then increasing distance. We also worked on scenting squares, where the handler walks in a square depositing their scent by taking little steps and using a defined entrance/exit route, scattering food on the square. Then they bring in the dog who theoretically hoovers up the food and pairs the scent with the food reward. Kipper didn’t do this as the food (kibble) wasn’t interesting enough in a stimulating environment, so we’ll be prepared to up the ante tomorrow! We finished by shaping to a new ‘object’ (poker chips we’d had in our pockets all day) and we’ll continue with these tomorrow. There were lots of breaks in cars in between sessions, I was surprised how tiring the dogs (and hoomans) found it.
It was a great day, I learned a lot about my handling and Kipper just loves it. Looking forward to tomorrow.
So we got a reliable nose touch, rewarding under the pot to reinforce the dog’s nose getting the scent, then moving this to a nose touch on the pot on the ground, then in different locations relative to the handler, then increasing distance. We also worked on scenting squares, where the handler walks in a square depositing their scent by taking little steps and using a defined entrance/exit route, scattering food on the square. Then they bring in the dog who theoretically hoovers up the food and pairs the scent with the food reward. Kipper didn’t do this as the food (kibble) wasn’t interesting enough in a stimulating environment, so we’ll be prepared to up the ante tomorrow! We finished by shaping to a new ‘object’ (poker chips we’d had in our pockets all day) and we’ll continue with these tomorrow. There were lots of breaks in cars in between sessions, I was surprised how tiring the dogs (and hoomans) found it.
It was a great day, I learned a lot about my handling and Kipper just loves it. Looking forward to tomorrow.