We had some opportunity for playing with this this weekend, because we were staying with friends at their beach house. It's hugely busy there in August, so there were loads of smells on the walk to the doggy beach. Both W&S were a complete nightmare to start off with, pulling this way and that to all the smells; compared to their day to day lives, it was complete sensory overload with hundreds of people, dogs, horses, cyclists, cars... all travelling the same track. But, with going right back to basics, I had them walking 90% nicely again by the next day, which was a relief! I had Shadow walking to heel, rather than just loose lead, for the majority of the path, because it's a long way along the dunes to the beach (about 2km) and so it would take forever to get there if we had to stop at every sniffing opportunity along the way! Once the heel position was re-established with the clicker and treats, I did lots of rewarding him by releasing him to sniff. This worked wonders for both of us; he could have a good long sniff when he walked nicely, and I could make good progress along the path between sniffs. I was surprised to find out just how rewarding sniffing is to him; most of you will know he's fearful of other male dogs (significantly more so of small dogs, I've discovered), and this is something I had ample opportunity to work on with the hundreds of dogs we saw at the weekend. Surprisingly, he would break off mid-look at a dog if we happened to pass a particularly good smell. This wasn't displacement sniffing at all, just sniffing that particular bush trumped his reaction to the other dogs. Now, if only I could bottle that and use it for training! By allowing him a couple of minutes of sniffing when I released him to a smell, I found that he wasn't as deaf to me. My theory is that, by him learning that I give him permission to smell things makes him less frantic about having to get the last bit of scent up his nose. Walking past or coming away from a scent is OK, because I'll reward him with some more scent later on.
