From a previous thread, @Ddski5 asked about a sit or a down to indicate finding a hide rather than the dog choosing its own way of telling you. Without going into the pros and cons with this method for sports scent work, here is how I trained to down for human scent articles. Since Asha is already familiar with the clicker = reward is coming, and also knows that if I act remotely like we are training something, if she doesn't know what we're doing she will offer a behavior that has worked before. So she looked around, saw a wad of paper on the floor that I put there (I've never trained on a paper wad before) and she just put her nose on it/downed and I clicked an gave food. I'm using dry kibble here, nothing high value. If she put her nose close to it click/treat. If she just downed but didn't have her face pointed at the target, I'd shuffle my feet or walk around until she realized the down wasn't everything I wanted. So at this stage, just LOOKING at the target gets click/treat. Ideally it should be between the front legs and her looking at it, but in the beginning reward looking at it, nose touch, then ask for duration of looking, then ask for a down, then ask for more duration. I toss kibble away from the target to make her re-set and make the right decision. If she didn't know this already, I would keep letting her stay over the target and reward her for staying on it. At her level I want her to choose to go to it, tell me that she thinks it's this OBJECT, not the down that's causing the paycheck. A few times she offered just a down while ignoring the paper wad. Choose whatever target you want to teach them to find. Once they know the response, move to a bigger space and put it out of sight, but not hidden so they have a short search before downing on it. Have a special word to begin pairing with this "Find it" is what most people use. This is a simple thing to teach, they usually learn the basics in a day or two. IF you want to trial in Scent Work, please find an online teacher or better yet a local class. Using a trained response for odor would be similar but you need to get that info from a pro. This is just for a fun demo if you want to play at home. Undoing behaviors is harder than training them, so think about your future goals. This could be done for showing off dog tricks to friends. Use car keys or a wallet. They'll be impressed. Spend a few days a week doing this and in a month your dog can find your keys in the yard. FUN is what we're having!
but it is interesting to me.
