i have clickers but have never used them in nosework training because bot UKC and CPE do not allow them at competitions.
Oh the internets, so hard to say everything clearly. The clicker is ONLY for teaching the TFR, not for finding the odor source. No need to use it for training to find the morels. Clicker train the down response to the odor as a separate training exercise. No clicker for your hidden search exercises, just proceed like your videos you shared. Use your "yes, hoo-ray, good girl" whatever verbal response to party with food when she finds the hide like normal.
I'm assuming she knows the word down, but never verbally say it when training the final response, as the clicker training is all about her doing it without a command. She just comes to understand that the down is her alert to you that she found it, just like turning to look at you was her alert before. As she transitions from alert by looking to alert by downing you might help a little, but once she gets several sessions on TFR she will probably start doing it on your searches, sometimes kinda combining them, look first and if you ignore her, then she will down and then party and treat. It's a process, but it is two different things. The TFR should go fairly quickly then no need to go back to it.
As an example when learning to Track for IGP, I was told to tracking completely separate from articles. Articles are the human scent pieces on the track. In trial when they are following the footstep tracks and find an article the dog downs with it between his front legs. The handler is 20 feet behind on a long line, so there is no way you can see the article. The dog downs and you advance to your dog, pick up the article and then send him forward on the track again. The rule (from my teacher, I'm sure there are different ways to teach it) was never ever put an article on a track until the dog will down on it in the house, in the yard, on a sidewalk, wherever the dog comes across an article he should down on it. Then when he finds it on a track he knows already to down on it, because he learned that's just what to do.
took her outside for 2 planted searches.
You're right, she's very keen on the odor, and is loving the game. Awesome!
You don't even HAVE to train a TFR if you don't want to. I thought it might help if she stays with a wild mushroom instead of getting excited and pouncing around and end up trampling one... If she's on leash on your wild hunts that could control her, but if it's safe I'd always rather be off leash. The zigging and zagging and being halfway graceful without getting tangled in the leash can be a challenge.
The other thing I was going to mention is when you do an actual hunt you should somehow be prepared to plant a hide somewhere in case she doesn't find any wild ones. So she wins. It's extremely important that if you send her to find something and there's nothing there that she doesn't get frustrated. They do this with SAR dogs a lot, when the search for hours and can't find a victim one of the SAR people will hide so a dog can find/get the reward and get a well deserved break. I don't even know when the season is, but since
@LifeofRubie recently found them maybe you are training for next year and have tons of time to get all this down. LOL. I had it in my mind you wanted to be ready to go in a week or two.
I hope I'm not complicating things, it's actually easy once you're doing it. I mean look how quickly Z picked it up. Mainly I'm hoping to give you ideas of making things very clear to your dog sooner rather than trying to fix things later. Working mostly on my own I found the hardest thing to do is fix what I had wrongly rewarded my dog for, then later realized it was faulty in trial or in real life.
