Juliette Mylius | 17 August 2023
Welcome back to this series! By now we are well into training, and it is going well. As you may have noticed, this post is structured like our last training session article of the series: a few sessions combined because they all are very similar. In this post we will discuss how session 4 did not go as well and how session 5 got us back on track, then continue the training to session 6 where we prepare to go a little harder!
Session 4
Now I would have to admit, session 4 did not go as well as I was hoping. The aim was to teach Duke to use his ‘search’ command when the tins were on the floor, however this was a harder transition than originally anticipated.
So, to set up, it was our usual (and I will now start to stop including this part because it is the same every time): A square cone training area, collar on Duke, my training gear etc.
I also kept the structure of the session the same as always. I always find that obedience, new commands, obedience works best because it gives Duke something to start off with that he is confident in. This will get him excited, ready, and happy to start training. Then of course, I also like to end in the same way! Especially as scent work is nothing like anything he’s done in training before, it can be easier for him to get frustrated or confused with the commands. So, starting off (and ending) confident, happy, and excited for training is super important!
Now to the training part. I have started off teaching Duke to identify a scent when holding the tin in my hand, however, today I wanted to transfer that skill to when the tin is on the ground. Yet, I soon realised that my initial method to do this, wouldn’t work so well.
So, continuing off what I was training previously, I held two tins (one hot and the other cold). Instead of holding them up to his face level however, I crouched down and held them near the ground. I gave Duke his command (‘search’) and got a few different reactions every time I did it:
- He would get the tin right.
- He would sniff the cold one and then go to the hot tin and indicate he’s found it.
- He would get the hot tin but also paw it (something I want to eventually discourage)
- He would just look at me confused.
- He would think the cold tin is right and wouldn’t check out the hot one.
Now the three most common reactions I would get would be 3, 4 and 5 obviously being the ones you would want least often. Now this is when I realised that I had probably approached this session wrong and that transitioning from searching up high to on the ground wouldn’t be as easy as I thought.
So, I decided to just finish off the session with a lot of obedience and then rethink my approach for session 5!
Session 5
Now this is the session where it all goes much better. Of course, we still need to work on searching on the ground, but it was definitely a big improvement from last time!
So, for this session, I wanted to train what I originally planned for last session but in a different way because that obviously wasn’t the right approach. I think I made it too complicated and underestimated the difficulty of changing to training the search command on ground.
Then eventually I realised, I should have just gone back to our basics! So simply: In session 4 I tried to change to training the command on the ground which was harder than originally thought. However, I did this with 2 tins only one of those earning him treats. So really, I just made it all harder and more complicated. What I should have done was started basic like we originally did and work our way up to finding the hot tins with a cold decoy.
So that’s what I did today. For this session, there was only 1 tin, the hot one. So, if he sniffed it, there was a reward. What I did was basically copied my session 1 training but instead I held the tin on the ground for him to sniff. Then mark (‘yes’) and reward (treat). I repeated this many times and eventually saw him become quite confident in finding this single tin on the ground. I also once or twice just placed it down (without holding it) and he sniffed it which was super good and something that wasn’t going to happen last session!
Then finally, I ended with obedience. This training session was great to see his progress and a good reminder that sometimes you’re training just needs to be a bit more basic in order to advance…
Session 6
And now to session 6, where we see our scent work training well back on track! For this session, I wanted to continue the basics that we had just previously gone back to. The aim was to continue working on 1 hot tin on the ground.
Everything practically started off the same as session 5: start with obedience, then sit down and hold the tin in my hand at the ground, rewarding when he sniffed, then moving it.
However, I saw a lot of progress in this so decided to move a little bit harder where I was standing up and the tin was on the ground. As simple as this sounds, it does make a difference because Duke is looking up at me and must know to check the ground without any indications from me sitting down.
With this change though, he instantly caught on! Occasionally there would be the situation where he would just look at me and so to prevent him from getting frustrated, I pointed at the area on the ground. This didn’t become a habit though, because Duke eventually figured out ‘search’ means ‘sniff the birch thing on the ground’.
The rest of the session mainly just went on with me standing up, moving the tin around with my foot and then asking Duke to ‘search’. This was some progress that was awesome to see and Duke and I were very happy with the result of this session.
Of course, we ended on an awesome note with obedience including some sits, stays, waits, ups, backs etc…
So, what’s the plan for next training session? Well, at the end of session 6 I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to do next: continue with some basic one tin drills or add a tin in… But with writing this on the day of doing session 7, I can tell you that we did a bit of both, and it went really well! – But you’ll have to wait to hear about that!
This training session was also filmed so you can check out some footage of it on our YouTube @practicepaws or below:
The next post in this series will be out on Monday (The 25th) where we dive into Session 7 & 8! Then next Thursday (The 28th) we will start to finish up this scent work series and discuss Sessions 9 & 10!
Thanks so much for following along with this scent work journey!
Feel free to give us some feedback on how you’re finding this series so far on our Instagram @practice_paws we would love to hear your feedback and of course also any recommendations if you are already training in Scent Work!