The following video is of the third class of a six-week session focused on developing value in the dog’s mind for the odor of birch. These dogs have had two prior six-week sessions on primary under their collar. The training is pretty straight-forward and easy but it serves some very important purposes. As way of background, my quest for over twenty years of training detection dogs has been to develop independent, focused, hunting dogs. And, I believe that the methodology promoted by K9 Nose Work achieves that in dog after dog after dog after dog by doing such a great job in developing value in the dog’s mind for the target odor. And that is done by first having a dog search for primary and then allowing the dog to self-reward once it makes the find on target odor in the dog’s foundational training. It is ironic that I had made major shifts in how I started the wilderness dogs on my volunteer canine search and rescue team in order to imprint hunting at distance BEFORE layering on the refind behavior (i.e., a wilderness dog’s “indication”). And FEMA dogs are often started by throwing their toy up on to the rubble pile and then the subjects these dogs are asked to find routinely have a toy (or toys) with them as the dogs search for them. Of course, as training advances, we want to make sure that the dog will go in and indicate on a subject that does not have a toy, but the typical maintenance problem is a subject that has a toy and rewards the dog with little involvement from the handler (unless we are working on strengthening a dog’s behavior as the handler moves up to the dog). That is pairing and self-rewarding by any other name (especially if we are doing “zero-delay” problems). And so, you would think I would have made the shift in my training methodology for detection dogs as well! Not! It was not until I was introduced to the K9 Nose Work methodology … and then saw the incredible results, again, in dogs that no one would ever had thought could do detection work, … that I revamped the training of my detection dogs too. So, I guess it takes a village … in so many things in life. With that, I don’t have too much more to say that what I have said in other videos….this particular training was geared to allow the dogs to independently hunt with minimal involvement from the handler. It was aimed at developing a positive, pro-active, problem-solving attitude in the dog where the dog believes that there will always be a hide to be found and that the dog will always be successful. As Ron Gaunt once said, “Dogs never get tired of success,” and that is a fundamental truth in dog training. Finally, we want to get an “eye” for a dog’s “intensity to do the work” which is something that we want to monitor throughout our dog’s working career. And “intensity to do the work“ does not mean quick, hectic, racing around, but rather a dog that is motivated to search, does not get distracted, is engaged in the search and stays focused on the task at hand. So, easy, quick hides in the beginning with limited handler involvement where the dog is initially allowed to self-reward creates dogs that have an “intensity to do the work” and who hunt like these dogs do. Enjoy!
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:16:04 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015