In three weeks, Divine will be trialing in NW2 (Nose Work level 2 with searching two odors). It has been 1 year and 9 months since she has gotten her NW1 title. I had been so busy working with Mickey, I put her training on the back burner and would dabble with her. October 17th will be the first time Divine and I enter an NW2 together.
Divine and I had to over come a lot of training issues. Some were her and some were mine. Divine tends to alert to odor about a foot or two away from source, so we had to work on her sourcing skills. Fortunately her last few classes, she has improved significantly on her sourcing. I also learned she is very odor obedient and will pull me back to odor if I pull her off.
Yesterday at Kim Buchanan's 3 hour workshop, we did what Kim calls a modified version of Amy Herot's Timmie in the Well. Kim calls it, Timmie in the Well Right Here. Kim had a lot of chairs scattered around the room with only one odor. We sat in a chair a decent distant from all the chairs and odor was put on a step stool. Divine at first kept searching the odor behind me, possible some odor floating there and because it was closer to me, she checked out the area closes to me. It was just a little bit of a challenge to get her to work in the search area. Kim did have to call her over once. Once Divine got into the search area, she started searching for odor. She found the odor and I got up and fed her the treat. The purpose was to make sure she stayed at odor and not more. As long as she stayed, I fed. She went away, I stopped feeding. I have done this exercise with Divine before, but never had her work this much distance from me.
Divine's second try she went to work better, searched for odor and as I walked up to her, she went away for a few steps from odor. I had to stop, and she went back to odor I fed. She saw that treat coming and she wanted to come to me. But the purpose of this exercise is for dogs to be really odor obedient.
Another exercise Kim had us do was had a clump of chairs together. This was to work on inaccessible hides. This will be a great one for Divine as I have needed to do more of this type of exercise. She did well. The first time was a little challenging for her. I pulled the chair out and it folded up. It is the old metal chairs so it made a big noise. Took Divine a little bit to work through that chair falling to get to the odor. The second exercise in a different area, she did really well pin pointing the odor. When I moved the chair away so she could get to source, the picture changed for Divine and she had to source all over again to find the odor, but then succeeded. Love these exercises.
I love doing exercises with chairs, there is so much you can do with them. Odor travels very interesting around them and you will find chairs in trials.
We had a mixed element exercise outside. Divine has never done a mix element, so it was fun. A hide in the ground, slightly above the head on a palm tree and the tir of a vehicle. The temperature was extremely hot, probably high 90's or 100 degrees. Divine did have to have a few run overs and passes to finally get odor, but she got them. The tire hide in the car she got instantly. I really do think when hot air is blowing, it is different for a dog to search. The air felt like a heater gust. I can't imagine what that is like for the dog. I couldn't wait to get back inside and I didn't watch the other dogs because it was just too hot.
Divine has a different style than Mickey. I have had to learn how to adjust to learn how to read her. She has gotten better and I've gotten better in how to read her. Divine is jut at a breaking point, and I remember Mickey was the same when he was at the NW2 level. That it is coming together but have a little bit more work to go. A few more practices with Divine and she will have this down. It is going to be a lot of fun trialing her!
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