Proofing against animal scents

@Lara, i was out walking the dogs this pm and Rourke was at a distance and on the scent of a Muntjac, he was away with the fairies on the scent, zig zagging like mad, I blew the stop whistle and he sat, looked at me and then I recalled him. Worth proofing your stop whistle

 

Wow yes it definitely is! And its nice to know it is possible

 

Thank you all for you helping me with my confusion. So in summary what I have learned (please correct me if I've misunderstood) is that what is essential is making sure stop whistle, recall etc is very well trained, proofed against dogs, people, food bowls and every other non-scent distraction I can think of before ever trying to train in the presence of rabbity fields (for dogs that are hunters, at least). And, I understand that when I do start introducing animal scent, I should try to find a very slightly scenty field and gradually work in more animally areas to build it up (although I still find the idea of this tricky, as I can't predict where or when there will be an exciting scent - sometimes she is fine in the rabbity field but sent mad by something in the 'boring' playing field). And the universal advice is find a good gundog trainer to give me more guidance

But my remaining (final...I promise...) question is, how do you know when you are ready to try in more scenty areas? Clearly we are not ready yet (because she can't do it) but how do you know when you are? With recall, she can now reliably respond in the presence of all the other distractions I've tried - just not when she is on a fresh animal scent that she wants to hunt.

 

I honestly don't know. I think it is when you feel you and your dog are a partnership.

 

Perhaps, as they say in corny martial arts movies, 'if you question whether you are ready, you are not ready...' I reckon I've got a way to go before I need to worry about that anyway. Thank you again

 

You move on when you have a high success rate (80-100%) in the area you're currently in. The difficulty with environmental things like this is that a) there may be a bunny party one night on your normally less smelly area and b) she can get used to the actual field rather than the smelliness of it. So you'd ideally want to find several areas with the same level of distraction to work in. Easier said than done with our rubbish noses.

By the way, I tried the face hiding thing with Luna this morning. She had absolutely no reaction whatsoever

 

@Lara, have been thinking of you again overnight How is she about retrieving? My Lab's reward is a tennis ball and I always carry one in my pocket, he seems to have eyes in the back of his head as he can be 50yds away and I only have to 'think' about hiding the ball and he seems to know and comes rushing back. He can be quite irritating being around me wanting the ball

 

Thanks! Yep, that's I think what I am finding frustrating - she's 100% unless there has been a rabbit rave...or a pheasant...phestival? At which point she is 0%. And its completely unpredictable. So her percentage reliability seems directly dependent on if there is a fresh scent or not, i.e. how many pheasant phestivals there has been in that particular field that day. Hopefully just working for longer when she isn't on a scent might strengthen things anyway.

Haha I tried the face thing this morning - she ran over (because my position was similar to when I find a chicken tussock), saw that she couldn't see my face, shoved her nose straight in my treat bag! Theiving little hobbit!

 

She is fairly keen on retrieving, but as with everything, only if there is not a distracting animal scent. Then, the ball could bounce off her head and she wouldn't care. Same with food. I wonder...if I got a sniffy rabbit fur ball, would that make the ball more exciting, or just reinforce that rabbit scent = amazing and make her even more likely to try to hunt rabbits herself?

 

It's not something I've ever used, and I've heard mixed reviews about it, but have you considered getting some liquid scent and using it in your garden? You could completely control the amount then. Might be worth a go as a step in training, anyway?

 

I was wondering that too! And as well as being able to train against it, surely if she is exposed to it regularly in a boring place with no exciting outcome, she should get habituated to it? I had more crazy notions of putting it in her bed or something - somewhere really far removed from a hunting context. I thought (once she had destroyed her bed looking for the rabbit) she might just accept that that is what bed smells like and get bored of it...but garden is probably a better idea!

 

I'm not sure whether it smells enough like rabbit to fool them, or if it's just an exciting scent in itself. Or a silly idea. I'm sure @heidrun would have more insight.

 

I'm afraid that's not how it works. For starters it is an artificially made scent that is supposed to be rubbed on to dummies to make them more interesting to dogs. None of mine were ever fooled by it. The other thing is that you will not desensitize a hunting dog to certain smells. It is hard wired to be drawn to those scents. All we can do is train our dogs to still follow our cues despite of the scents, and sights the dog wants to investigate.

 

Oh poo. Well, at the least, perhaps I can use it as snowbunny suggests and just use it as an example of an interesting scent that is under my control, so I can practise stop, recall etc in the presence of it (only if she finds it at all interesting, of course!).

 

I thought it might be a bit too easy. Could it be useful, then, to buy a dead rabbit/pheasant from a local source and drag it around the garden, just so that the training could be done in a controlled environment?

 

I have never used cold game in that fashion. Again I don't think it will work. Cold game will smell totally different than a live animal.

 

Do you know anyone with a pet rabbit, or guinea pig, or something that you could let run around your garden, with Indie inside of course! Then you could wait an hour or so and try in the garden?

When thinking about different places to train, how is Indie when you are in new places compared to places she knows? Mine is very confident if we are somewhere that we go to regularly and will happily go quite far and run off to investigate something interesting. Whereas in a new place he sticks closer and is more worried about losing me. If Indie is the same, maybe somewhere new is better to train, as she might be less confident. But, some dogs are harder to train in new places because they want to explore!

 

It's very clear I have no experience of this

 

Wouldn't it be enough if Indie became focused on the rabbit skin ball and less on her environment?

 

Unfortunately, she is more excited and hard to control in new places. Good idea though, I'll save that one for when I have a less contrary dog