remy
Active Member
I decided to start a separate thread for trials instead of using our training one.
Our first scent work trial yesterday was a success! We had a lot of fun too. I entered each of the elements twice. Remy qualified in 6/8 searches and even got placements in both interior searches by going 2nd & 3rd fastest. 10.93 seconds and 17.25 seconds were his times.
I was proud of him for not making a mess with the boxes! He nudged them a little with his head when he alerted, but none of the walking on, paw smashing, etc that he’s done in the past during training.
He got one NQ in buried and another in exterior. I wasn’t sure if we would Q at all in buried because he’s only trained it a few times, and only one time was the odor fully buried. Buried was also outside. The NQ in buried was what I’d call an “honest mistake”. He gave all his typical signs of an alert, but it wasn’t the correct container. The one with the odor was directly across from the one he alerted on, so he must have smelled enough to think that was the one. The judge had me take him to the correct container to smell it but he was honestly more interested in sniffing the grass around it lol.
The NQ in exterior was mostly on me. I’ll start by saying though that I didn’t really like the area they chose. It was close by or even the same area where they had dogs “staging” in the first trial for buried. Shouldn’t it have been an area that wasn’t accessible to people/dogs beforehand? It was just a tree and some stacked up logs. There was pee on the ground that he got distracted by a few times. I’m assuming this was from before when dogs were waiting in that area. Turns out he did actually locate the odor but he got distracted and went off of it. If he would have stayed there slightly longer (didn’t get distracted) I would have called alert there. When he became interested in a new area and stayed there I called “alert”. Then he ended up lifting his leg but thankfully I stopped him before he could actually mark there. I guess that’s why he was interested in that spot
. My friend ran after us and her dog also got distracted by the same spot with pee and ended up going there too.
At this point I think the biggest thing we need to work on is just training more in new/public places. I was hoping to do this a lot more but only made it to Lowe’s once to train… He spent some time at the beginning of most searches just being excited and running around, then when he finally got to work he found the odor each time in seconds. He was “worse” with this during the outside searches. The judges said he was fun to watch lol.
We’ll likely do another trial at the end of November! This one will also offer all elements and has two trials in a day. He should be able to finish his SIN and SCN, possibly the others if he is able to Q both times!
I shortened the videos a bit so they are mostly just the alerts. These were his 6 qualifying searches.
This is the NQ in exterior. The spot on the ground was the pee odor. The logs he sniffed was the correct spot, but he wasn’t there long enough for me to be confident in calling it.
False alert in buried. He had change of behavior (head snap) and stuck with it, just not the source of odor lol.
He kept wanting to look at people during his first exterior search lol.
Waiting for our next turn.
Our first scent work trial yesterday was a success! We had a lot of fun too. I entered each of the elements twice. Remy qualified in 6/8 searches and even got placements in both interior searches by going 2nd & 3rd fastest. 10.93 seconds and 17.25 seconds were his times.
I was proud of him for not making a mess with the boxes! He nudged them a little with his head when he alerted, but none of the walking on, paw smashing, etc that he’s done in the past during training.
He got one NQ in buried and another in exterior. I wasn’t sure if we would Q at all in buried because he’s only trained it a few times, and only one time was the odor fully buried. Buried was also outside. The NQ in buried was what I’d call an “honest mistake”. He gave all his typical signs of an alert, but it wasn’t the correct container. The one with the odor was directly across from the one he alerted on, so he must have smelled enough to think that was the one. The judge had me take him to the correct container to smell it but he was honestly more interested in sniffing the grass around it lol.
The NQ in exterior was mostly on me. I’ll start by saying though that I didn’t really like the area they chose. It was close by or even the same area where they had dogs “staging” in the first trial for buried. Shouldn’t it have been an area that wasn’t accessible to people/dogs beforehand? It was just a tree and some stacked up logs. There was pee on the ground that he got distracted by a few times. I’m assuming this was from before when dogs were waiting in that area. Turns out he did actually locate the odor but he got distracted and went off of it. If he would have stayed there slightly longer (didn’t get distracted) I would have called alert there. When he became interested in a new area and stayed there I called “alert”. Then he ended up lifting his leg but thankfully I stopped him before he could actually mark there. I guess that’s why he was interested in that spot
. My friend ran after us and her dog also got distracted by the same spot with pee and ended up going there too. At this point I think the biggest thing we need to work on is just training more in new/public places. I was hoping to do this a lot more but only made it to Lowe’s once to train… He spent some time at the beginning of most searches just being excited and running around, then when he finally got to work he found the odor each time in seconds. He was “worse” with this during the outside searches. The judges said he was fun to watch lol.
We’ll likely do another trial at the end of November! This one will also offer all elements and has two trials in a day. He should be able to finish his SIN and SCN, possibly the others if he is able to Q both times!
I shortened the videos a bit so they are mostly just the alerts. These were his 6 qualifying searches.
This is the NQ in exterior. The spot on the ground was the pee odor. The logs he sniffed was the correct spot, but he wasn’t there long enough for me to be confident in calling it.
False alert in buried. He had change of behavior (head snap) and stuck with it, just not the source of odor lol.
He kept wanting to look at people during his first exterior search lol.
Waiting for our next turn.
Trials are great though for finding out where you are at in your training. I'm always eager after a trial to go home and work on our holes to improve ourselves. 
It’s okay though because it’s given me something to do. 
The dogs knew not to alert on dog pee so even though they acted very interested in the area they wouldn't alert. Took me a while to realize why and what I'd done wrong. Now I only use outdoor areas carefully placing hides where even a tall dog can't have marked! Low hides go in sidewalk cracks where it would be highly unlikely.
