Sniffing Around Scent Work

I am running Yeti in practice. It’s a largish outside area, and he started off well, getting a hide near the start and moving quickly to source another. He has circled the area and is slowing now, and I get ready to call another alert. When I have rewarded him for the third hide, we move on, and I watch him slow even more.

“Ok, watch this” I say to my friend, “he is gonna stop searching now and start looking back at me”

Sure enough, I see him pause, and then he makes a full stop and looks at me, tongue hanging out, eyes bright.

I know there are four hides and we have only found three.

“Let’s go, buddy, let’s keep searching, there’s another one,”

I survey the area, trying to see if there is a place we have missed. Maybe that corner with the trailers, I am not sure we went all the way around them. We go back to check the two storage trailers parked in the corner. Yeti dutifully sniffs around them, but I see no signs that he is getting any target odor.

He stops and looks at me again. “I dunno Yeti, what do you think? There has to be one more…”

I encourage him to pick a direction, but he is adamant in his decision: he has found everything that he can. He has done his job and doesn’t feel inclined to put in overtime.

I turn to my helper “Ok, we need a clue.” She directs us over to a wall that I thought we had covered, and after some more urging, I convince Yeti to keep going and we find the fourth hide. (It seemed fully accessible, but perhaps it was one of those scent problems that needed the proper angle to figure it out….the mysterious of scent work are legion)

I hate the fact that Yeti very predictably stops searching after the third hide, it drives me crazy. And yet I also know that it is my fault.

I have spent a lot of time in the last 6 months training for Masters Interiors where the maximum number of hides is three—in fact, I have overtrained stopping after three hides. Yeti has internalized this, and automatically stops after finding three. He thinks we should be done. It is a matter of habit, and it is undo-able, but in the meantime, I have to put up with the “ok I am done” attitude—not good since we are planning on entering Detective next month, where there are always at least 5 hides.

There are people who would say that dogs couldn’t possibly know how many hides they have found—that counting is beyond their intellectual capacity.

I have absolutely found that they can. Can they do arithmetic? Well, that may be questionable. Arithmetic involves the manipulation of abstract symbols, and I am not sure that is possible for dogs (although I wouldn’t rule it out entirely).

I suspect that their ability is more like a sharpened sense of physical observation. After a certain number of repetitions they can feel what the maximum is.

Astra went through a period when she would stop searching after three hides, after we finished our Master level. She quickly adjusted, with just a little urging, since she is a lovely soft, agreeable dog. Yeti has a very hard head, so I am anticipating a lot more struggle with him.

I am not the only one who has experience this sort of phenomena. I remember when I was working a sheltie in obedience. At that time I belonged to a club with a clubhouse, where we went to practice our go-outs . I was warned by the training director that I needed to practice in other places—the clubhouse was shorter than the standard obedience ring, and many of the members had failed in competition because their dogs would run out only so far, and then turn around and sit, before the command was given. They had internalized the exact distance of the length of the clubhouse, and would go no further.

I had a friend who was competing in water dog trials. These are competitions for Portuguese water dogs which showcase the traditions skills of that breed—swimming and retrieving nets, diving from boats, etc. There are, apparently, required distances for some of these events, and my friend told me that one of her dogs had memorized the minimum distance and would not swim one stroke over that.

There is no end to our dog’s cleverness.

As for Yeti, I know what I have to do. Drill 4, 5, 6 hides and work up to even more gradually.

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