Sniffing Around Scent Work

I admit it. I have been proud of my ability to train a good, competitive vehicle search. My first nosework dog, Riley the chihuahua did well in vehicles. Astra has had multiple first place searches in vehicles in both UKC and NACSW searches. My students have generally done well in the vehicles element.

But Yeti, ah Yeti. A horse of a different color as they say. We have had a rather tortured start in vehicles, failing at the novice level a couple of times, through my own incompetence (Novice!! I would have thought that wasn’t possible!). And because we have focused on the AKC competitions a lot, we have not trained vehicles as much as we should have.

So I entered a trial, thinking it would motivate me to focus my training. And two weeks before the trial, I find myself in a series of disastrous, bumbling training sessions, where I came annoyed and Yeti came away puzzled.

I had to have a “come to Jesus” meeting with myself (I just love that phrase. It is not native to my vocabulary, I am not from the south, but it is SO expressive). What was I trying to teach? What was I expecting?

The answer was that  I was expecting too much from my adolescent boy, and being very inconsistent in my training. I was trying to work multiple vehicle too soon. I came to the conclusion that I needed to go back to basics:

1. Chase the bunny
2. Work on one vehicle only, moving the hide placement around randomly, being sure to hit the inaccessible hides as well as the accessibles.
3. After I see him finding and pinpointing the hide on one vehicle consistently (AND PROPERLY—have I mentioned the fringing???)
4. Work a distraction on a vehicle (hidden toy, which is what we will have in the UKC Advanced level).
5. Work one blank car and one hot car.

So, we did. For over a week, we went out and worked one car, every day. And then at the end of the week, we worked a blank car and then a hot car.

Here is what that looked like:

I am pleased with his progress. I think the training plan has worked, as you can see that he is sticking closer to the vehicle than he has in the past.

The question was: would Yeti work like this during the trial? After all, I was doing most of the training at home, where he is comfortable. Comfortable with my car, familiar with the wind patterns around my place. It would be very different at the trial, and trial stress often erases even the best lessons.

Unfortunately (but predictably, because, after all, this is Texas) the vehicle trial day had a brisk breeze blowing. For those of us who have issues with our dogs fringing, the wind is not your friend. However, my philosophy has always been to trust your dog to work the wind, and I repeated that to myself firmly as I approached the start line. I made the choice to put Yeti on a shorter leash, in order to encourage him to work closer, and…. he did pretty well, passing both runs, and earning a fourth place in one of them.

Here is one of his runs:

Have we gotten over the hump, and beat the vehicle curse? Only time will tell….

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