Feburary 20, 2009

Wow! I have not been able to post anything for several days because I have been working Dino on tracks everyday and I wanted to spend the time to do those tracks instead of writing in his blog. I knew I would be able to catch up.

He has been doing great. We have been working all VST urban tracking in neighborhood in this area. We have been working on corners and we have been learning the negative and positive responses. He has had the negative response, but we have added the positive response.

It has been raining like crazy for several days, so we have been getting some great experience tracking in pouring rain. I don't think we have done that at all, this is has been good (except for getting soaked!)

We started doing tracks six to eight hours old and focusing on corners and practicing when scent is there and when it is not. For a positive response I have been teaching Dino to "stand" and then "bark." I wanted to do something that is totally different than his negative response, which is coming in front of me and sitting.

Last night we did a track that was about 26 hours old, which is his longest. He did great on the scent following, however, we had some issues how doing the negative and positive signals. This is one of the things I am going to change, which I figured out by this morning. I think he has become so focus on getting the treat, that he is forgetting about what he is supposed to be doing. I have seen this before when I trained Scout. She started to do that, so I know it is not unusual. What I have decided to do is to fade out the food reward for the negative response and just acknowledge and verbally praise. I will continue the food reward for the positive response since he is still learning that. I am still teaching him that and rewarding him to teach him the response of the stand and a bark.

I kind of figured this out when I got kind of frustrated with his non-response to a negative. He was just standing there doing nothing even though I repeated that corner several times. I started to walk back to the car and I felt like "No, this is what he wants. To get out of this and not have to do this." So I took him further back on the track before the corner and this time he got the turn across the street all on his own. I thought, "He does know where it is, but for some reason didn't take it." I thought maybe he was intentionally doing a negative to get the treat, though other times he does a turn. I do feel like sometimes he does a negative just to get a treat. So, that is why I am not treating him anymore for a negative. I feel he understands that part since he has been doing it successfully for several months. I will focus on reinforcing the positive response.

I will continue to work on corners over and over until he gets that down. A solid positive and negative will be the key to a search, at least from what I have seen so far when working with Donna.

I also am gradually increasing the age of the track. I am not increasing the distance because I think that is fine at this point. We need to increase the age of the track faster. I have found that is where the challenge is for the dog. It seems to change a lot as the track ages. The distance is not such a challenge because there will be times for breaks and not a lot of tracks will be really, really long. I would rather work on the age of the track and the difficulties those cause along with the variety of the environment.