Anyway, with the shortened days upon us, I thought it would be fun to play some of the games that don't require big or expensive equipment at home. One of them was a "scent game" of sorts... I bought some buckets at the dollar store so we could work on the game. The problem is that I really don't know what the next step is! But perhaps some of you have ideas?
The set-up is there is one designated "scent" bucket which right now contains a treat. On command the dog checks out the buckets and finds the treat. Shuffle the buckets, and repeat. Gelly was a quick study. I am thinking the next step is to teach her to somehow indicate the scent bucket and then get the treat, but I'm not exactly sure how to do this. Shape it with a clicker? Command her to down when she is near the bucket? I guess I could do some research or wait until we go to class again (it is a drop in class, different every week... I actually took Ellis last week, but he is sort of a dork and the games weren't as fun that week either) to ask, but maybe one of you SAR trainers might have a suggestion?
Anyway... this is what it looks like right now. I know she skips a few buckets, but I think she probably could smell that the treat wasn't in there, and I promise that she would have gone back to them if she didn't find the treat in another.
That is cute old Bailey behind the x-pen... Ellis was back there somewhere too. Not that they need to be contained or separated, but I didn't want them to interfere with the game. I love watching the clips I took of Gelly if for no other reason than to see her wagging tail. And I love the look she gives me at the end... the "OK, now what???" look.
5 comments:
I actually trained two of my dogs to do this! And this what the explosive/drug detection do, just without treats as the scent. What I did was I taught my dog to sit when she found the scent, eventually we progressed to her pawing exactly where the scent was. To do this I kept her on a leash in the beginning and hid the treat under an object or buckets in your case. When she alerted that she found the treat, usually by using her nose to try and lift up the object, I told her to sit. Sometimes a leash correction was necessary to make sure she understood what I wanted. Once she sat she then got the treat. Once your dog gets the hang of this you can do the same thing with the paw. Just by reinforcing the behavior you want when the dog finds the scent.
I also taught my dog to bark when she found the treat, if we did the excerise off leash in a wide open area or throughout our house so I could find her. Eventually they get really good at it and it is hard to create a challenge. My current dog Ggoody can find treats when I hide them in the car. I put the treat inside the car and she searches around the outside of the car and sits at the door she smells the treat in. It's a ton of fun to train the dogs for this! Just keep practicing and eventually they will get the hang of alerting in the style you want.
I forgot! Here is a link to one of my posts where Ggoody finds a treat hidden in the car. The video is of her in the beginning stages, but it shows sort of how I do things. Enjoy!
http://raisingtsapuppy.blogspot.com/2010/03/one-year-agofrom-yesterday.html
I would personally get her used to offering behaviors for the clicker away from the setting of the scent game. That way she wont get discouraged/confused about the game while she is figuring out the shaping game.
Then when she understands to offer things it should be easy to get her to offer something when she finds the right bucket.
I love that now what face? It's like she's saying, "Don't I get more?"
OH, cool - I think Ellie would totally LOVE that game! I wanna go get buckets now!!!!
Post a Comment