I'd say he (and you) are doing just fine! It will be interesting to hear what they say in the workshop about all your questions. As an aside, I love your garden, Julie! It's so pretty! You have lots of places to hide things! Mine will be more difficult - I only have one tree and my vegetable garden (which is fenced off, although a certain pooch figured out a way to get in last summer, ahem). Do you think Charlie realizes what a lucky boy he is?
HeeHee - the garden was much nicer before I got a puppy! All the empty bits of soil you see used to be full of a lovely fern collection. Big, fabulous things. That were killed off stone dead at the delicate frond stage by boy Labrador pee! Yes, must pick all the boxes up and untie the broom and plastic bottles from the garden chairs.....
Is it a bit like a spaniel hunting? Just because his nose tells him there's something all the way over there doesn't mean he should ignore all the other 'ground'......
I think one of Ken Rs videos had his dog checking each box in turn before indicating when he got to the correct box. It seems in opposition to retrieving where we encourage them to trust their noses to lead them to the retrieve object but more like spaniel hunting where you want good ground coverage rather than just legging it straight to scent.
It sounds like it, yes. There is a bit in the DVD that says if you want to progress onto harder stuff, you and your dog need to be in it together and while the dog can do the easy searches alone, that's not the point. The dogs are meant to do stuff like jump up on the handler to look higher up (not touch walls etc) and so on. So it's a dog and person thing. I suppose it makes a lot of sense that the dog searches what you tell him to search.
I would be tempted to try that and see if you can be more together. Also maybe doing extra sniffing together on walks to practice togetherness?
I reckon the catnip scent is so strong for Charlie, that is why he goes straight to it and doesn't search the earlier boxes, 'cos he knows where it is!
That's true, for sure. He just knows which end of the garden is the catnip! I suppose that's the trick in it all, though, to still get the dog to search with you - as it gets more difficult, he is not just going to be able to run straight to the catnip! And I do suppose for safety your dog should only search where you tell him to search.
In the scent work I've done the gold standard is having the dog check all the options - even if they've already found/registered the right object you still want them to keep checking the other available objects so they're sure they've got the most correct option. Then once they've checked everything they should come back to the most correct one (ie. strongest smelling). Not all dogs do that but it's considered to be the ideal and most thorough method. Is that what you're trying to train for? The way we did this in our class was to teach scent discrimination first. That means the dog being presented with many similar objects in a group on the ground (not touching) with one being of the target scent. There is no hunting element because all the objects are visible. You just want the dog to choose between them by scent. Kind of teaching them the first simple step - 'there are many objects that may be right but only one is right'. Only once they have understood that would you start hiding objects (at first only under a light cloth or something). Anyway, just a different approach.
I don't really know what I'm trying to train for - because I just watched the first video, and all the example dogs in the video were being encouraged to look in boxes, and some were ignoring the catnips toys so were being encouraged to pick them up etc. They didn't have an example dog that ignored the handler, legged it up the garden and found the catnip toy, with the strong opinion that the human was not at all necessary! Maybe I should watch the second DVD, and find out a bit more where I'm supposed to be going! That would seem sensible!
I watched the video yesterday, and I'm looking forward to starting with Willow. I just need my toys and catnip to arrive. I'm desperately trying to get her more enthused about games, too, because I'd prefer to use toys rather than food (not sure if my reasoning is sound, I just think it makes the whole process more about the two of us doing something together). Yesterday evening's "training" session was spent throwing things around and tugging with her. We also found a ball that we'd lost in the snow back in November I like the look of the mice, although they are small, but if I can get her to return them, then we can use them as a catch or chase game. I'll pick some up when I go to IKEA - I have a long list of stop-gap things to buy for the new house from there, anyway.
I think searching for toys is better than searching for food - although it's a bit of a no brainer for Charlie since he is so clearly massively motivated by toys and is pretty 'meh' about food.
It is handy, alright - although I've put in the hours, there was a time Charlie couldn't give a fig about tug, now it's a massive reward for him, so you can build up the value of different toys and games. That said, Charlie definitely has very strong play drive that is part of his nature.
Well? Did you get started with the catnip? I paused while I watch the second DVD, I hope to do that this morning.
After watching Charlie, we thought we would have a go. Fred and Annie love it. Great for when the weather is bad. Sometimes Fred finds it first and other times Annie is first to find it. I have got a few small cat toys with cat nip in them. I have made some squares with cat nip in them too.
