Tonight's practice was focused on motivationals for *all* the teams, not just us. This was due to two major factors: it was pouring rain and many of the teams have been deployed recently to a search where the victim has yet to be located.
Our pattern tonight was 2 short runs followed by one triple the length of the other two. K was our victim, no flanker. Weather was 50 degrees and rainy; the ground was soaked and muddy from 3 straight days of rain as well.
Run 1: About 40-50 ft down a dirt road; K ducked in about 5ft into some brush. Z did a pretty much picture perfect find-alert-refind sequence and so did I. K rewarded with food play as last week. Good motivation/speed, clean and powerful alert and refind.
Run 2: About 50-60 ft down a dirt road. K ducked in about 10 ft. Another pretty run - again a nice level of motivation and good enthusiasm on the alert and refind. Same rewarding.
Run 3: About 150ft with a big right turn. Gave K 50 seconds to get into place, released Z. Great speed to find K; K reported that Z shot past her about 20ft, but skidded to a stop, paused and then located her. K wasn't sure if she had used her nose or visually located K, but I was just THRILLED to learn that there was no "faking" on the refind as there has been the last 3 or 4 practices. Z found K and came straight to me for *another* great alert-refind. I had K really feed her up at the end of that 3rd run because it was so wonderful to see. :)
Now to keep going in this direction...fingers crossed!
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2 comments:
Hi, I just found your blog and read it through. It was great to find a blog on SAR training, there don't seem to be so many of these out here. I am also a SAR fan and am thinking about getting a new puppy for SAR soon (I got hooked to it with my old dog). Lots of happy training!!!
Heidi kelos@ut.ee
Just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of working with several handlers and their wonderful SAR dogs. I've been fascinated by these wonderful dogs since I joined SAR but now more than ever. It takes a lot of time and devotion to raise and train a working dog, for sure. It's so neat to see what they can do.
BTW, I've featured your blog on both of mine. I think my readers will be interested in your writings too. Thanks for sharing this.
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