Yay for husbands!

I got my husband, S, to agree to help me get some training in today after he got home from work. I need to do it more often but my schedule is screwy enough that it's hard during the week; today we didn't have team practice since we had one just yesterday, so I decided to take advantage of the extra time.

Earlier today I had worked Z on scent zen to try and reduce her crittering in the field, so I figured I'd use my time with S's help to try our proofing out.

Before we all headed out, I took my spray bottle of deer scent out to the open field across the street and sprayed it in about 6 places, all near areas I wanted S to pass. It was drizzling, s each spot got 2 sprays to make the scent as strong as possible. Usually I don't try to make things uber difficult for my dog, but I really wanted to test the little bit of work we'd done earlier.

Z and I stopped at the edge of the field and I sent S out about 70 ft angled to the right, where he dropped behind a small drop-off. I sent Z and she blasted off, kicking up mud. She got to him, then beelined back to me where she forgot to jump alert in favor of running back to her victim. I instructed S to not reward that return and called her to me and encouraged the jump alert, at which point she was sent back to the victim with our "Show Me" cue and heavily rewarded. The track had taken her less than 2 feet away from one scent mark and about 4 feet from another with nary a backward sniff!!

Next, I had S go about 60 ft away and up a slight incline where he hid right past a small pine I had marked with deer urine. Z again took off like a shot, blew past the mark, and found her victim. I had to recall her for the refind, but she did a nice alert before being sent back with "Show Me" and rewarded nicely.

For our 3rd runaway, I had S walk about 100-120 ft away and walk behind the edge of a hill out of sight before dropping down. There were no scents at this point, but I did stand about 4 feet away from a marked plant while I waited to release Z. Z again flew off after S, found him, did a GREAT refind and alert, and headed back nicely - very purposefully.

With this nice result, I decided to go ahead and do a fourth run to get some distance past scent marks we had already passed. I had S walk back to where Z and I had started our very first runaway, so about 300 feet up a series of small inclines. His path took him by all 5 marks and I had him stop about 4 feet from one. By the time he was in place, Z was as hyped to go as I've seen her in a looong time - spinning, whining, straining at the leash, everything I like to see. Upon release she was just gone - no hesitation at any marks and straight in to S's location. She did loiter at his feet a bit longer than I'd like so I got her attention and she was back to me with an awesome jump alert like a shot, rebounding to him at speed as well.

This session was wonderful in sooo many ways - nice focus even with distracting scent, super high desire to search even with a victim that's rather boring (S doesn't run or holler and his rewards consist of just tossing about 4 treats at Z's head and maybe a few pats, no verbals), and enthusiastic alerts that were so hyped that she didn't even have a chance to grab the treat from my hand before she was off to return to her victim. Very cool and oh so heartening to see after her initial performance at training yesterday. :)

Anti-crittering work and improvement

To follow up on the learning of yesterday, I went out to Academy and bought some bottled scent from the hunting section (yay for a gift card lol). I ended up with the following: raccoon urine, fox cover scent, and buck urine. Yummy. :P They will be living in the garage because OMG do they stink (even to my wimpy human nose)!

Since I was off today, I decided to do a little pre-training before using the scents as distractions in the field. The raccoon urine was first - I sprayed about 4 or 5 sprays of the urine onto a post in the corner of our backyard. I got Z all dressed and leashed and took her out in the light drizzle to work on Zen. Z wasn't immediately drawn to the scent, but once she hit it she was quite interested. I kept tension on the lead but did not correct or cue. As soon as her head came away from the post I clicked and rewarded with cat food. I walked her by the scent again and it took only a few seconds for her to turn away. By the 3rd walk by she was completely ignoring the raccoon urine, so back in the house she went and out came the deer and fox scents.

I sprayed the deer urine on grass about 20 ft from the raccoon post - 4 sprays - and squirted the fox scent onto a kleenex on the ground 30 ft from the deer scent. Of the three I have to say deer is the stinkiest!

I brought Z out again and walked her by all three scents. She ignored the raccoon still (C/T), missed the deer (still C/T), and was intrigued by the fox. Again I held tension on the lead and waited for her to turn away to C/T. Walked her by it several times, C/Ting for turn aways. After about 4 reps she was ignoring it as well.

On the second pass by the deer scent she caught it and BOY was she sniffing. To avoid creating an unwanted "find the animal scent" behavior, I actually told her to "Leave It" on this scent since she was so entranced. That worked quickly (yay!), so I started her back near the fox scent for a walk by. This time she still ignored the fox, but beelined to the deer. I waited and the head came up after about 5 seconds, so C/T and walk by. Rinse and repeat. it took about 6 reps to get her "over" the deer scent, but still not shabby at all.

By the end of our 5 or 10 minute training session, Z was *walking over* all three scents for the most part and when she did sniff it was only for a split second before turning away. Great progress, but will it transfer to our SAR work??