Yes that's a great idea Cath. They toy is only about 4" tall so tiny. I will get one of the boys rucksacks put the toy in, hide it in the garden and hope he can find it. I don't know, I don't want to push him too quickly, the big wide world is extremely interesting to Charlie He follows a trail that I lay in the garden leading to the toy, no problem As soon as I get the stinky toy out his focus is really good, he will stop whatever he is doing for this training x
This is getting really exciting, Helen. What does Charlie do when he finds the toy? You are such a clever boy Charlie
I don't know if you sew Helen, but I brought a small bag of catnip from my local garden centre, it was only about £3. I made small squares and filled them with catnip. The smallest is about 6cms square, you can do them by hand. I tried to make it hard from Fred and Annie to smell them and of course easier to hide. You have to make sure that Charlie wouldn't eat it though. Fred OK, but I would trust Annie, she would eat anything She ate a dead baby bird last week feet and all. Just 2 day before her op.
Thanks Cath, I'm not using catnip, I am storing his toy in a container of tripe sticks which really stinks because Charlie loves them. So do you think I need to get a smaller toy? @JulieT How did you progress making the find harder for Charlie, what did they suggest on the course you went on? Any advice would be appreciated. He immediately brings it back to hand, I get him to sit out of sight and hide it again x
@JulieT How did you progress making the find harder for Charlie, what did they suggest on the course you went on? Any advice would be appreciated. [/QUOTE] I posted the steps here: http://thelabradorforum.com/threads/choc-charlies-new-training-log.11828/ But I didn't see what the dogs searching for cheese did - I know it was something different, and I think they had to throw away each cardboard box after a single use. Presumably because the scent of the food soaks into the cardboard. They were using gardening trug buckets, I think. Perhaps because plastic can be wiped or washed?
For those who might want to have a go, session one went like this: 1. You need a defined 'search area' - the dog has to stay in an area you are working in, you need this later. 2. Throw in a catnip scented toy, let the dog see it. (Charlie didn't need the throwing bit, we dropped it) After this step, neither handler or dog knows where the toy is hidden. 3. Throw a toy behind something, eg a chair or barrier (we skipped this bit for Charlie) 4. Direct the dog to 'find it' in the search area without him seeing the toy 5. Repeat, with the toy hidden behind chairs etc. 6 Repeat again, but with the toy hidden in a box - at this point, you need to start directing the dog - this is not a free 'find it' game, the dog needs to start looking where you tell him 7 Repeat again, with lots of other, empty boxes, cutting down the time the dog 'free searches' and starting to direct the dog where to look nearly right away 8 And so on, hanging the toy up high, putting the toy inside two boxes, inside boxes stuck on the back of chairs, on a shelf so the dog has to stand on a chair to reach, adding two rows of chairs, rows of buckets, and so on. The point of the exercise is not to have your dog legging it round searching randomly, but to have your dog looking where you ask him to look because you need this later as the scent gets smaller and smaller, the search area bigger and bigger and more complicated until you can find a tiny scrap of catnip in a warehouse etc. We did move on to searching outside, but doing directed searches. So we weren't searching the environment, we were searching in a search pattern with the environment as a distraction. Does that makes sense? So, for example, we were asking the dogs to search a line of buckets instead of sniffing the hedgerow. This isn't tracking, by the way, this isn't about following a ground scent - it's about directed searches to find a item in a complicated environment - a warehouse, a train etc. To direct a dog (if you are right handed) have the dog in front of you, and walk round the search area backwards, in a clockwise direction, so the dog is moving towards you, and indicate where the dog should look with your right hand. Try not to fall over the various chairs, buckets, boxes, and cones as you walk backwards.
Excellent, thanks Julie this is really helpful and I am thoroughly enjoying doing this with my Charlie. If he gets good enough maybe we could do a workshop, who knows
Why not? I'm sure he'd love it. All the workshops are listed here: http://www.talkingdogsscentwork.co.uk/Talking_Dogs_Scentwork/Workshops.html
How big is your toy you are using at the moment Julie and should he be rewarded with food for the find ? That's the website I looked at, thanks
I had a problem with the toys used in the workshop - Charlie's reward is to play tug, but he is a very enthusiastic tug player, and on the first go playing tug with the toys they used, badly bruised my little finger on my hand! So I started taking the toy (it was a toy mouse, no bigger than 4in) off him and giving him his tug toy. The instructor wasn't too keen on this, because the protocol is to play with the search toy - but this is only because that's what they do and they are building the desire for the search item (you wouldn't do this in obedience etc. you'd train a 'passive indication' where the dog stares at the area with the scent in, but this takes too long to train, and most pet dog owners are not interested in training it). There is no reason why you can't give a separate reward though, it will still work (either a game with a different toy, or food). In this way, it's no different to a retrieve that that dog has had to hunt for - I actually think this is better, because you are training a behaviour, it seems much better to me. In the end, the instructor decided that Charlie was so pleased to find the mouse, he didn't need another reward, so we just let him have the mouse for a bit. I think as it gets harder, and the mouse less novel, he will need another reward and I'll go back to playing tug. The reason you use small toys though is because you can hide them much better than larger toys. And the reason they used toy mice is because they could hang them up with their tails!
Great, I am doing the right thing giving Charlie a food reward for his Christmas tree toy which is about 4"
Yep, you can reward him giving you the toy, or play with the toy. The instructor at the workshop said this (a separate reward) results in the dog being less enthusiastic to search, but that's not right. If it were, you'd have to play tuggie with retrieves! It might pay to make sure that the dog knows the reward is for bringing the toy back to you - a marker, or a clicker etc.
Good point, Charlie knows the food reward is for giving me the toy as I say "good", do they allow clickers on the course?
No-one was using one, and I didn't - I cued Charlie to give me the mouse, because he was playing with it.
