Dog Training - Nosework

Geller, Tamar, and Jonathan Grotenstein. 30 Days to a Well-Mannered Dog: the Loved Dog Method. Gallery Books, 2011.

1/19/18

For my final post, I decided to try a fun game with Marcy that involved her amazing abilities to track scents. This game, while being enjoyable, will also be the next step in teaching her how to retrieve lost items based on the scent she picks up from it. Since this will be a new concept to her, I can expect this to take a longer time, but hopefully by the end she will have mastered it.

To start, I set up 3 containers without the lid in an open area. I placed thin cloths over the top to cover where the treat will be hidden, but not hide the scent. Geller instructs, "Let your dog smell the food, then 'sneak' it into one of the boxes without letting your dog see which one you've chosen" (Geller 329). She also mentions that you can utilize the "stay" command in this game as well (Geller 329). The main objective for Marcy was to correctly choose which container held the treat.

The first obstacle I ran into with Marcy was getting her to smell the treat without eating it. Every time I held out the treat for her to smell, she would lunge at it with her teeth. I had to tell her to sit a few times before showing her the treat. As soon as she got a whiff of it, I took it away. Then, I placed her in a separate room to hide the treat. I then brought her back in the room to choose the container. At first, she only looked at me, not knowing what she was supposed to do. I pointed at the containers and said "treat" since that's what she best responds to. Her ears immediately perked at the word, so I continued to point at the containers. Eventually, she started to sniff around the boxes, using her paws to try to take the cloth off. She was clawing at all of them, probably missing the point of the drill. I had her smell the treat again, then immediately pointed to the boxes again. She went to one of the boxes and poked her nose at it. I took off the cloth. She hadn't chosen the right one, but she was getting the idea.

I decided to try a different food that had a stronger scent. I let her smell some ground beef instead, then placed it in the container. This method seemed to work a lot better, as she picked out the correct container on the first try. I set it up again, and she picked the right container once more. To make sure she really got it down, I added boxes to make it a little more difficult. I don't think she really paid much attention to them because she always went straight to the container with food. For the final level, I decided to hide the food outside of the box, to see if she could find it somewhere she didn't expect. The first few times, she went for the containers. Eventually, as she sniffed around a little longer, she found the food. I tried hiding it in different places (but still close enough to smell it), and almost every time she found it. 

Overall, I think this game went really well and it really improved her ability to use her sense of smell to find hidden objects. 

Would you consider trying this game out with your dog?
What are some other games you like to play with your dog?

I 

Dog Training: Clickers

Using Clickers 

Training your pet to do tricks requires many things.  Some of these aspects include strategy, rewards, and copious amounts of patience.  Strategies vary and require some testing to determine which ones your dog responds best to.  However, they can be vital in teaching your dog to complete tricks.
My dog, Sadie, is very hyper and her attention can only be held for small amounts of time at once.  She gets excited very easily, but is very smart, making teaching of tricks complicated.  Methods can be used to channel her focus into learning the tricks, and I wanted to try a new one.

One of these many methods is using a clicker.  Clickers are devices that fit within your hand and when pressed makes a click-click sound (Sundance 32). Often, clickers can be used to train dogs instead of trainers' using their voices because it's a more clear and consistent sound. 

For this post I chose to use the clicker method to teach my dog a trick, in addition to treats.  The clicker definitely helped tell my dog when she had completed the trick, therefore creating more clear instruction on my part.  Even though I got frustrated the clicker helped maintain my dogs focus and kept it from being clouded by my emotions.  This is mentioned in the book: "A clicker separates the reward marker from any frustration, anger or other emotion in your voice.  It allows the dog to focus on what he is doing, rather than worrying about how your mood is changing," (Sundance 32)  This piece of evidence is what made me pick this method to try out. I think this is one of the best advantages of using a clicker because it keeps my dog from thinking I'm mad at her when I get frustrated.  However, I did notice that although she responded well to this method, it still took a long time and multiple tries for her to understand what she was doing.  Therefore I think this isn't truly the best method in for her. At first she was confused on what the clicker was, but I introduced what it meant, and after a little while, she started to understand.

Overall, I think this method is useful, but not by itself.  It's a difficult strategy to navigate and although it helped my dog, it needed a good amount of help from verbal commands and treats. In addition, the clicker was hard to hold when I was trying to demonstrate the trick. This experience helped my dog improve her listening skills and learn a skill faster than if we tried the trick without the clicker.  This section of reading in my book showed me how to appropriately and effectively use the clicker and how it would help me and my training with my dog.

The trick I used for this was spinning, where my dog would spin around and sit on command.  What tricks have you taught, or tried to teach your dog?  Did you get frustrated while teaching?

Sundance, Kyra. The Dog Tricks and Training Workbook: a Step-by-Step Interactive Curriculum to Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog. Quayside Pub. Group, 2009.