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.
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