Scent article frustration and progress

I’ve been working on and off at scent articles using the Round-the-Clock method.  It seems like a good method, and would probably have gone better if I had focused solely on RTC until the dogs understood completely.  As it was, I would get partway, be making some progress, and then slack off for some reason or other and then have to back way up when I returned to it.  One reason I tended to slack off is that it is very boring (for me) and time consuming. A bigger issue was the conflict with Maple’s hunt training and scent articles.

Hunt training and obedience overlap in many ways, but also have many areas of confusion.  One example is in how a dog in hunt training is conditioned to react to a pile of objects, such as bumpers.  In hunt training, a part of teaching fetch is “Force to Pile.” The dog is supposed to run to a set of bumpers, scattered a few inches apart, and grab a bumper without any “bumper shopping” (inspecting the bumpers and deciding which one he prefers to pick up).   Obviously, teaching scent articles involves teaching the exact opposite. The dog is supposed to “article shop.” 

So, Maple, the golden, was especially struggling to understand the scent articles. With RTC, as the cheese was removed, she couldn’t get it out of her head that the retrieve was the goal.  I read Connie Cleveland’s method of teaching scent articles in such a way that the scent detection was taught separately from the retrieve.  It sounded like a great idea.  She runs goldens in obedience and hunt/field tests, so she knows a heck of a lot more about training for both simultaneously than I do.

Before starting CC’s (Connie Cleveland’s) method, I needed four cookie tins big enough to hold two scent articles.  CC writes that she chose cookie tins, partly because “almost everyone has some packed way somewhere.”  I don’t know about everyone else, but, while I may have had a cookie tin or two sometime in the past, I didn’t have a single one at this time in my life.  Off to the department store, which had no cookie tins.  I tried the local store full of home craft, cutesy-type stuff. No luck.  The local Bed, Bath, and Beyond, chock full of any kitchen gadget you could ever want?  Sorry, try back closer to Christmas.  It turns out that July is not a good time to look for cookie tins. 

I briefly tried substituting disposable aluminum cake pans for the cookie tins.  I wired one on top of the other to make a cover. Within a few days, when the dog is supposed to paw at the correct container, it became obvious that my flimsy aluminum contraptions would be flatter than pancakes after a good pawing session.  I did what I should have done in the first place: resorted to the internet.  Did you know that there is website with the address www.cookietins.com? Neither did I, but if you are looking for cookie tins in July, it is the place to go.  I ordered 4 identical gold-colored cookie tins, 8 inches in diameter and about 3 inches high for about $25, including shipping. They arrived in about a week.  I punched holes in the lids with hammer and a screwdriver. I hammered the holes from the top side of the lid and pounded down the sharp edges on the underside.  I used a Sharpie to write 1, 2, and 3, respectively, on the tins I intended to leave unscented and wrote 6’s all over the one I would scent.  I used “6” for the scented one, because that’s the number of the article I scented in the RTC method. 

First step in CC’s description is to put the cookie tins, without their covers, in a row, being careful not to touch the unscented ones. Rub the scented tin and put a treat in the tin. Send dog.  Follow dog and give more treats and praise when the dog finds the tin with the treat. No surprise, Maple and Alder thought this game was pretty darn easy.

Next step: Put the lids (with holes) on the cookie tins, with the treat inside the scented tin.  Here, I ran into a problem.  Without the lids, I could handle the unscented tins with tongs. With the lids, the tongs didn’t work.  I eventually hit upon the idea of handling the unscented tins with my hand in an inverted sandwich bag.  I never reused the sandwich bags, even within a session.  CC says that the dog cannot simply sniff the tin with the treat and look at you.  He has to give a “persistent indication” meaning lots of pawing and nose shoving.  No problem.  Both dogs were happy to nudge the cookie tin, lick the top, and paw at it to try to get the treat.  Maple, persistent retriever that she is, could get her mouth around the edge and would try to drag it to me. I made an effort to walk in and praise and treat before she got that persistent.

Next step: Scent a leather and metal scent article and put those in the scented tin with the treat.  The lid is still on the cookie tin so the dogs cannot retrieve the article.  No problem.

The next step is the real test: Put a treat in all of the cookie tins to see whether the dog understands that he is looking for your scent and not the scent of the treat.  CC said her dog did not get it the first day.  He pushed tins at random and, when he didn’t get a response, would go to the next tin until, by chance, he got to the scented one. CC says she was quite discouraged that first day, but the next day, Micah (her dog) had figured it out.

My experience at this stage was less positive. Maple would paw at a container and, if she got no response, would usually try the next one.  If she hadn’t found the right one by the third attempt, she tended to go off and sniff grass.  I had to put a leash on her to keep her from wandering off. Alder was worse. He is a passive dog under the best of circumstances.  His response to anything he doesn’t understand is even more passivity.  The first day or two, he would put some effort into finding the right tin, and I thought he was getting it.  By the third or fourth day, he would go reluctantly to the tins, half-heartedly sniff and, if it wasn’t the right one, he would simply stand with his head hanging, staring into space.  The dogs were actually drooping when they saw the cookie tins come out. Clearly, this was not working.

I took a day off training to mull it over. I use treats all the time to train.  The dogs simply could not understand that they weren’t supposed to follow the treat, just as they often had in the past when I would initially train an exercise by luring. 

So, next training session, I deviated from CC’s description. I put down only the scented tin with no treat in it. I gave the command to Find Mine.  As soon as the dog sniffed the scented tin, I praised and treated. I did it again a couple of times, but now waiting for a more persistent indicator than a sniff. Then, I put out an unscented tin a foot away from the scented tin. Neither tin had a treat.  As soon as the dog sniffed the scented tin, I praised.  Next repetition, I waited for a more persistent indicator of the scented tin than a sniff.  Both dogs quickly figured out that they needed to find and paw at the scented tin. 

Today, I started with two tins, one scented, one not, neither with a treat. On the next rep, I added the two other unscented tins.  The first couple of times with four tins, both dogs would sniff a bit at the unscented tins but would quickly move to the scented tin. Finally, we seem to be back on track.

For my dogs, I think that, up to the step of putting treats in all the tins, the dogs were well on their way to knowing what I wanted, but that the treat in all the tins only confused them.  Why could my dogs not figure it out while Connie Cleveland’s dog could?  Who knows?  Maybe, in retrospect, my treats (a piece of string cheese) were too alluring?  Perhaps a boring piece of dry dog food would have been less distracting. Maybe it was because they had both spent so much time on the RTC method, they were too conditioned to look for the scent of cheese.

Regardless, I am now feeling more encouraged and ready to move to the next steps once we have a few more days of tins without treats.

Alder Cassidy CDX

When I started this blog, the post announcing Alder’s CDX was the one I longed to write.  Yet, here it is, nearly a month and a half since Alder got his 3^rd leg (on his 25^th run) and I’m finally getting around to writing it when it’s old news.  Since the end of April, nearly every weekend has been taken up by some dog activity (obedience trial, obedience chair, hunt training day, dog show, hunt picnic test, obedience trial, hunt test, agility chair..)  I’ve spent nearly every evening after work trying not to fall too far behind in those pesky household tasks, training dogs, or getting ready for the next weekend. 

Now that I have a few weekends free, it’s about time I announced Alder’s CDX.  I have already received the official certificate from AKC.  I don’t have any of my college diplomas framed, but I told George I’m going to frame Alder’s CDX certificate because I’m pretty sure it cost me more than my PhD. 

Alder got his third leg on his third show of this spring.  The first two shows, he did great on the moving exercises and then NQ’d by sinking into a down and going to sleep on the long sit.  I had spent the winter retraining (I thought) the sit, using the method of tension on the leash.  I NEVER followed the sit with down.  And then, the first and second shows, he goes down on the sit.  Between the second show in Spokane and the third show in Coeur d’Alene, I had a week to come up with a fix. There is no UDX in Alder’s future, so the fix only had to work one time (assuming he did all the other exercises, which he has become fairly reliable on). 

I put a list on the refrigerator calendar: Day 1 had SD (sit/down), DS (down/sit), SD (sit/down).  Day 2 had DS, SD, DS.  And so on.  SD meant that he and Maple (might as well get her ready for her out-of-sights, too) would do a 4-minute sit followed by a 6-minute down.  DS meant a 6-minute down followed by a 4-minute sit.  I did a SD in the morning, a DS after I got home from work, and SD before bed.  The next day, I started with the DS. All three of us were heartily SICK of sits and downs by the end of the week. 

The purpose was to get Alder realize that, at home, the sit would always be followed by a down with no treat in between.  I believe that, in never having him do a down after a sit in practice, he had learned that, in practice, there was no down, but at a show, he knew I would always come back and put him in a down, therefore (he concluded) I wanted him to go down at a show.  He virtually never broke a sit in practice.  I needed to get him to go down in practice to make it clear that I didn’t want him to do that. 

It took three days of sits and downs for him to finally go down at home.  Then, I implemented the second part of my strategy: No harsh correction, but I immediately went out, restarted the exercise, and had him sit the entire 4 minutes.  In the past, on the theory that he needed to succeed to understand, if he went down, I would put him back in a sit, but only had him do a 1 or 2 minute sit. 

The next day in practice, he went down again. Again, I made him redo the sit for the entire period.  He didn’t break after again during our training at home.

I went to the Coeur d’Alene show, cautiously optimistic but I still had all the fall shows penciled in on the calendar.  When you’re on your 25^th run in Open, you’ve learned that high hopes lead to long falls of disappointment.  I chose the Coeur d’Alene site because, in the past, the obedience rings have been in a horse barn with a dirt floor. Because Alder is a marginal jumper, I preferred to avoid the thin mat on concrete situation.  At the show site, I learned that enough people had complained about the dirt floor (which was sometimes muddy) that they’d moved the ring into a building that was barely big enough and that had—you guessed it—a concrete floor.  Back to the thin mat on concrete.  Sigh. 

I was already there, so I gave it a shot.  I held my breath as Alder returned to the jump with the dumbbell.  I could see the hesitation in his step, but he took it.  We were the only team of 5 that was still qualifying at the group sits.  While we handlers were waiting outside during the sits, an albino Robin, who had a cream coloration about the same shade as Alder’s, hopped nearby on the lawn looking for worms.  One of the other handlers commented that maybe it was a good omen for us.

After the interminable 3 minutes, I went back into the ring to see Alder, slumped on one hip, eyes half-closed, and dangerously close to sinking into a down.  But still technically upright!!!!

And so, both Alder and I have our first CDX.  Score was 188.5. (Biggest point loss was going directly to heel after the drop on recall.) As the only Q in the class, we had a lock on first place.  Nice way to finish up for the title picture.