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18. SCENTING |
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Dog finds a treat hidden under a cup or piece of cloth. This is an optional behaviour. DISCUSSION: In official competition, there are only a few areas where scent discrimination is required – a pity, since working scent can teach you so much about the dog, and is so much fun for dogs and people. Teaching the dog to find a treat under a piece of cloth doesn't, of course, begin to challenge her ability to use her nose, it merely tells her that you WANT her to use her nose. Give it a try! EASY BEGINNINGS: Start with interesting treats – cut up hot dogs, pieces of cheese or roast beef. Get a washcloth or other small piece of cloth. Put the cloth on the floor. We want to differentiate what you're doing now from Zen, so first, show a treat to the dog, put it on the floor near the cloth, and tell the dog she can have it. Repeat X10, gradually moving the treat until, by the 10th repetition, the treat is ON the cloth. During the next 10 repetitions, gradually move the treat until it's resting just UNDER the edge of the cloth. When the dog is eagerly going to take the treat out from under the edge of the cloth, you can start asking her for a SitStay while you put the treat under the cloth, then releasing or clicking and letting her get her reward from the cloth. Ten more repetitions and you should be able to put the treat down and put the cloth directly on top of it, release her from her SitStay, and let her dig the treat out from under the cloth. That's
it, you've got the whole behaviour. SHE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO DIG UNDER CLOTH! Use the same method to get her to tip over a plastic or foam coffee cup, a small paper plate, a paper napkin, or a Kleenex. ADDING
A CUE: You can add a cue when she's good at finding
the treat. Using her nose to find something isn't retrieving,
so use a word that won't mean she should retrieve. I use Find
It! |
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LEVEL FOUR Dog finds correct article of 2 out of 3 times, hand scent only, 1 cue each. Dog may Retrieve article, or indicate. What indicator is used must be determined before behaviour. This is an optional behaviour.
We'll
be talking about this behaviour as if the dog were retrieving
already. If she's not, you can certainly still do scent discrimination,
just click when the dog is definitely indicating the article.
Be VERY careful, though, that you don't start telegraphing the
correct article. The world is full of dogs who get near an article
and glance at mom, near another article, glance at mom. When mom
starts breathing again, or stands up a little straighter, or smiles,
the dog knows she's hit the right one. This is SUPPOSED to be
an exercise of having the DOG find the right one. They must be all the same. Two wooden spoons. Two metal spoons. Two plastic dumbells. Two paper plates. You must be able to write numbers on them. With metal articles, you can do this with nail polish. The reason for this is that you MUST be able to tell the difference so you won't lose track of the article with the scent on it. I've soon too many people telling the dog she's wrong for picking up the right article or following the wrong track. The dog must be able to easily retrieve them (assuming, as I said, that the dog is retrieving). Here's the big hairy secret to teaching scent discrimination: GET A STRANGER TO STINK UP YOUR ARTICLES! You want the dog thinking "Ick, ick, ick, MOMMY'S!" C'mon, you can find a stranger. The mailman. Clerk at the grocery store. Somebody else walking a dog. Stay away from the guy who pumps gas, his hands smell worse than you need! Have the stranger rub his hands all over your articles, spending about 15 seconds on each one. Repeat this at least every 3rd session of using your articles. Another hint: if you start with six articles instead of two, you'll be able to work more often without "reloading". Alright, you're ready. You've got two articles that smell like a stranger AND THAT YOU HAVE NOT TOUCHED SINCE THE STRANGER DID! Take one of them and scent it – rub your hands all over it. These are "normal" hands, hands that haven't been washed in the last ten minutes. Take a dab of your goo (peanut butter, whatever) and put it on the bar of the dumbell, or the handle of the spoon. Put it on the floor. Go and get the dog, bring her within a foot or so of the article, and show her the goo. Let her lick it off the article. If
she licks off the goo and then brings you the article, great,
give her small treat with no fanfare in exchange for the article.
If she licks off the goo and doesn't bring you the article, that's
fine too. Retrieving isn't the hard part of this exercise, telling
the dog that you want her to find your article is the hard part. Now it gets "harder". With your kitchen tongs, put the second icky-stranger-scented article on the floor. Put more goo on your own article, and put it VERY CLOSE to the icky article. We need to talk about this for a moment. Most people think that putting the articles far apart will make scenting easier. And it probably does. But we're talking about a behaviour as difficult for the dog as telling a black hat from a white hat is for you. The PROBLEM is the EXPLANATION of what you want the dog to do. "I want you to find the one I just touched, and not the one that somebody else touched that I've been carrying around in a bag in my car for three days" doesn't translate all that easily. If your dog is retrieving, it will be easy for her to think this is just another retrieving exercise, and if you put the two article far apart, there's no reason for her to think otherwise. So put them together. If you're using dumbells, you can butt them right up against each other. So
you have the icky article and the goo-and-hand-scent article side
by side. Send the dog out. WOW WHAT A CLEVER DOG, SHE FOUND THE
GOO! AMAZING! Work this until she knows why she's going there, is eager to get there, and has been right 10 times in a row. Now you can go back to replenishing the goo 4 times out of 5. Work 20 sets of five. Then replenish the goo 3 out of 5 times. Be sure that you keep up her enthusiasm for the job, that she's not making mistakes, and that you're not clicking until AFTER she's clearly told you which article she wants (or is retrieving it). This is another excellent place to be working your 300-Peck durations. If she makes a mistake at this level, go back to re-gooing every time, then leave out one in 5 again, then 2 in 5, then 3 in 5, then 2 in 5, and finally only once in 5. If you have to, you can go all the way back to goo on one single article on the floor. If your dog is retrieving, you can be trading the article for a treat each time she brings it back. At
least every third time you put the goo article out, re-scent it
from your hands. PROBLEM SOLVING: I HAVE OTHER JOBS FOR HER INVOLVING SCENTING, AND I DON'T WANT HER TO RETRIEVE WHAT SHE FINDS! Not a problem. Police tracking dogs don't retrieve, and neither do drug and agriculture dogs at border crossings or airports. Decide what you want her to do to indicate that she's found the scent (let's say Sit, for illustration). Send her out, she finds the article, she licks the goo, you ask her to Sit, click and reward. Keep that up until there's no more goo to find, only your scent, and keep cueing her to Sit when you know she's found the right one, until she starts to Sit automatically. You'll be working with the articles slightly farther apart than a retrieving dog should have them, giving her room to indicate the way you want her to. SHE WON'T RETRIEVE METAL! That's not a scent discrimination problem. That's a retrieve problem. Work on it as a retrieve exercise, completely removed from scenting. ADDING A CUE: When she's running out to the articles, enthusiastically searching and consistently finding the right one, start telling her what it's called – Find Mine, Whazzat, Search – whatever. Do NOT, however, use a Retrieve cue. If you point her at two articles and cue a retrieve, and she goes out and retrieves the wrong one, she isn't the one who's made a mistake. You TOLD her to retrieve, she DID retrieve. When
my dog knows how to retrieve but hasn't yet thought of picking
up the right article when she finds it, using ONE article only,
I'll wait until she's just finishing licking off the goo, then
I'll use my Retrieve cue, very quietly. Saying "Oh, by the
way, as long as you're out there, how about bringing that sucker
back?" If she knows how to Retrieve, I want her bringing
the correct article back to me before we go on to two articles,
because I don't EVER want to make a mistake telling her to Retrieve
and having her brain pointed at the wrong article when I ask her. The
next step would be to not replenish the tiny bit of goo on your
hands every fifth time, then 2 in 5, etc. And one day, when your
articles are clean and freshly stranger-scented, you try scenting
one article with just your bare hands. |
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LEVEL FIVE Dog finds the correct article of five, three times in a row. This is an optional behaviour. DISCUSSION:
Nothing new here, we're polishing and building the number of articles.
Slowly, slowly, SO many dogs lose confidence here from being asked
for too much too soon! |
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LEVEL SIX Dog finds the correct article of eight, three times in a row. Appropriate cues. This is an optional behaviour. DISCUSSION:
Now she really knows what she's doing. Start thinking
of all the great tricks you can do with scent! |
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LEVEL SEVEN
DISCUSSION: Rainy, nasty days don't have to be boring. Hide some food and toys around the house and entertain yourself AND your dog! |
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