Post by oksaradt on Aug 30, 2010 13:54:16 GMT -5
If there are more typos than normal, I apologise. I just had rotator cuff surgery and I'm one-hand typing.
I thought I'd addressed this before, but didn't see any specific thread on it. So here goes:
Regardless of alert, with HRD more than most, a targeting mechanism is an essential tool that the handler/trainer must give the dog to tell the human scent morons exactly where the scent source is. With live find dogs, the human is pretty obvious, so this never comes up.
I'm going to use my 9 month-old puppy, Thorpe, and a 13-month old lab as contrast to demonstrate this need.
I wanted to see where Thorpe was at in regards to if he is ready for buried work yet. He's located a jewish grave and two bones in sandy gravel, but that's not a very good indicator. I set up a 12 source course with 10-foot overlaps. The sources were equivalent to two historic-level molars in a one-inch diameter shaft one-inch deep. When placed, the amount of water it took to fill this shaft was poured in to facilitate diffusion. Course was worked by Thorpe two days later at optimum conditions except there was some sun in areas and shade in others. Thorpe found two of the twelve on his own and was able to target with his natrual touch. Thorpe worked 30 minutes over this area to locate those two sources. It conveyed to me that we needed to continue to wean down his sensitivity to fewer teeth, so the next day he had six two-historic-teeth surface problems to work and he nailed those in 8 minutes. The sub-surface problems will still be there when he's ready, so no big deal.
To be fair to Thorpe, I ran Murphy over the course 15 minutes after his failure. With no direction other than boundaries, Murphy located all 12 sources in 8 minutes like it was child's play....which at his level it should be. Murphy confirmed to me that the scent was there for the dog with the properly trained nose.
Yesterday, had the 13-month old lab over to run the same course in the morning to see where it was at. This is an awesome lab that's been working skeletal since it was about 8 weeks old. It was obvious once the lab got into the area that it had scent. The ten-foot overlap between sources seemed to confuse it some, so that will have to be worked on, but the biggest issue was it had no way to tell us exactly where the sources were. It alerted multiple times between sources and near sources, but I can honestly say that unless you use the flags or a dog that one will never see the location of the sources. If the outer flags weren't there, a dog would be essential to recover the teeth.
So, targeting is a method which the dog shows us human morons exactly, precisely where the source is. This can be a touch with the paw (not a dig) or the nose or (as with my Tempe) it was always dead nuts between her paws. The method is irrelevent as long as the dog is consistent and precise. Many handlers allow their dog to slap for a touch because the dog is excited. The older I get, the less helpful a slap is and I have to work with a dog that uses its paw or nose to say, "it's here Stupid...here....right here at the end of my claw....." Murphy is very good at this.
With the puppy, we did a little trick that (currently) Jonni Joyce is getting credit for, the toy next to the source. I demonstrated and suggested to the handler that the ball reward can be placed under the handler's shoe with the source immediately in front of the source. The dog does a touch for the ball, the handler exclaims, "good ______!", and the handler lifts their foot rewarding the dog. ______ can be Touch, "Show me", Point, .......whatever floats your boat as long as it's consistent. Do this exercise fast and often till the dog associates the Praise/Command with the action of pinpointing the source for the reward. I've had dogs that wanted to bite the ball and this turned into a nose touch quickly.
I know some handlers teach a touch with a "touch stick", but I've never had to do this so I'm not versed at it.
So, the handler has been given instructions to set up (say) ten piles of four wet historic teeth along a path/driveway/grass run/etc.,
Stand immediately in front of the first pile with the toy under foot.
Tell the dog to find. Dog sees ball, does their paw or bite, Handler rewards TARGET while creating a verbal association/command. As long as the dog is having fun at this, repeart until you can't stand it no more.
Do this daily for several weeks until dog begins to anticipate.
Take ball away from foot, now stand in front of source and ask for a "Touch/Show me/Point/etc." Dog should now see this as the targeting game. Reward target with reward. Do this ad nauseum for a couple of weeks.
During all this time, you were also doing regular scent problems with the dog per your normal training schedule.
Now set up problems with a source the dog can locate, but not possess/disturb/etc. The scent source needs to be obvious sources the dog has worked before as we're not working on its nose, but the mechanics of targeting. Dog makes find. Dog does alert. NOW After about six weeks, Command the Target.
No matter how polished it was before, it will start out rough now. Reward on first successful attempt.
All training hence will have 1 or 2 target requests, but not all. The dog has to know this is not a new alert/indication, but a secondary tool.
My dogs have all had to get good at this because I'm infamously bad about needing their help to locate a source. I've had student's dogs dig and send teeth everywhere on many an occassion and my dog must come with me to locate each and every one of them. I've placed teeth in gravel and my dogs have gotten more pleasure out of seeing me sweat trying to find
my teeth in the gravel. My first dog Dax would sit next to me. I'd ask "show me". She'd nose, do a touch. I'd go hunting and she'd go catch her ball, sit next to me and squeak it in my ear while I hunted as even having a tooth pointed out to one sometimes just isn't enough.
I've gotten bricks mixed up on indication stations and had my dogs check them before letting students work the pile as a blank. I had one student smirk at me and exclaim as I kicked a pile over and had Murphy check through them, picking out two, "I suppose he can tell you exactly which ones."
Yes, he can.
What sort of instructor would I be if I had new dogs work a pile as a negative and there was residual scent in the bricks from previous problems? I try to keep them separated, but mistakes can happen. I got dogs.
Why is targeting really important? Two reasons
It eliminates any concern over alerting in scent pool. If I think my dog is alerting in a scent trap, I can ask for a target. The dog will either show me exactly where the source is OR checks and realizes it has scent with no source; thus, it resumes searching. As a handler, I know there's scent in the area and that my dog is trying to work it out. Without a target, the handler is going more on faith and this creates very nervous handlers.
The other reason is that sometimes the sources are so small that L.E. just doesn't believe you have a find until you can produce the teeth, finger bones, bone shards, etc They like something they can take to the labs to test. Also, targeting gives your dog a tool to tell you where the scent is strongest as they begin working buried problems where they never get to the source.
Hope this helps,
Jim
I thought I'd addressed this before, but didn't see any specific thread on it. So here goes:
Regardless of alert, with HRD more than most, a targeting mechanism is an essential tool that the handler/trainer must give the dog to tell the human scent morons exactly where the scent source is. With live find dogs, the human is pretty obvious, so this never comes up.
I'm going to use my 9 month-old puppy, Thorpe, and a 13-month old lab as contrast to demonstrate this need.
I wanted to see where Thorpe was at in regards to if he is ready for buried work yet. He's located a jewish grave and two bones in sandy gravel, but that's not a very good indicator. I set up a 12 source course with 10-foot overlaps. The sources were equivalent to two historic-level molars in a one-inch diameter shaft one-inch deep. When placed, the amount of water it took to fill this shaft was poured in to facilitate diffusion. Course was worked by Thorpe two days later at optimum conditions except there was some sun in areas and shade in others. Thorpe found two of the twelve on his own and was able to target with his natrual touch. Thorpe worked 30 minutes over this area to locate those two sources. It conveyed to me that we needed to continue to wean down his sensitivity to fewer teeth, so the next day he had six two-historic-teeth surface problems to work and he nailed those in 8 minutes. The sub-surface problems will still be there when he's ready, so no big deal.
To be fair to Thorpe, I ran Murphy over the course 15 minutes after his failure. With no direction other than boundaries, Murphy located all 12 sources in 8 minutes like it was child's play....which at his level it should be. Murphy confirmed to me that the scent was there for the dog with the properly trained nose.
Yesterday, had the 13-month old lab over to run the same course in the morning to see where it was at. This is an awesome lab that's been working skeletal since it was about 8 weeks old. It was obvious once the lab got into the area that it had scent. The ten-foot overlap between sources seemed to confuse it some, so that will have to be worked on, but the biggest issue was it had no way to tell us exactly where the sources were. It alerted multiple times between sources and near sources, but I can honestly say that unless you use the flags or a dog that one will never see the location of the sources. If the outer flags weren't there, a dog would be essential to recover the teeth.
So, targeting is a method which the dog shows us human morons exactly, precisely where the source is. This can be a touch with the paw (not a dig) or the nose or (as with my Tempe) it was always dead nuts between her paws. The method is irrelevent as long as the dog is consistent and precise. Many handlers allow their dog to slap for a touch because the dog is excited. The older I get, the less helpful a slap is and I have to work with a dog that uses its paw or nose to say, "it's here Stupid...here....right here at the end of my claw....." Murphy is very good at this.
With the puppy, we did a little trick that (currently) Jonni Joyce is getting credit for, the toy next to the source. I demonstrated and suggested to the handler that the ball reward can be placed under the handler's shoe with the source immediately in front of the source. The dog does a touch for the ball, the handler exclaims, "good ______!", and the handler lifts their foot rewarding the dog. ______ can be Touch, "Show me", Point, .......whatever floats your boat as long as it's consistent. Do this exercise fast and often till the dog associates the Praise/Command with the action of pinpointing the source for the reward. I've had dogs that wanted to bite the ball and this turned into a nose touch quickly.
I know some handlers teach a touch with a "touch stick", but I've never had to do this so I'm not versed at it.
So, the handler has been given instructions to set up (say) ten piles of four wet historic teeth along a path/driveway/grass run/etc.,
Stand immediately in front of the first pile with the toy under foot.
Tell the dog to find. Dog sees ball, does their paw or bite, Handler rewards TARGET while creating a verbal association/command. As long as the dog is having fun at this, repeart until you can't stand it no more.
Do this daily for several weeks until dog begins to anticipate.
Take ball away from foot, now stand in front of source and ask for a "Touch/Show me/Point/etc." Dog should now see this as the targeting game. Reward target with reward. Do this ad nauseum for a couple of weeks.
During all this time, you were also doing regular scent problems with the dog per your normal training schedule.
Now set up problems with a source the dog can locate, but not possess/disturb/etc. The scent source needs to be obvious sources the dog has worked before as we're not working on its nose, but the mechanics of targeting. Dog makes find. Dog does alert. NOW After about six weeks, Command the Target.
No matter how polished it was before, it will start out rough now. Reward on first successful attempt.
All training hence will have 1 or 2 target requests, but not all. The dog has to know this is not a new alert/indication, but a secondary tool.
My dogs have all had to get good at this because I'm infamously bad about needing their help to locate a source. I've had student's dogs dig and send teeth everywhere on many an occassion and my dog must come with me to locate each and every one of them. I've placed teeth in gravel and my dogs have gotten more pleasure out of seeing me sweat trying to find
my teeth in the gravel. My first dog Dax would sit next to me. I'd ask "show me". She'd nose, do a touch. I'd go hunting and she'd go catch her ball, sit next to me and squeak it in my ear while I hunted as even having a tooth pointed out to one sometimes just isn't enough.
I've gotten bricks mixed up on indication stations and had my dogs check them before letting students work the pile as a blank. I had one student smirk at me and exclaim as I kicked a pile over and had Murphy check through them, picking out two, "I suppose he can tell you exactly which ones."
Yes, he can.
What sort of instructor would I be if I had new dogs work a pile as a negative and there was residual scent in the bricks from previous problems? I try to keep them separated, but mistakes can happen. I got dogs.
Why is targeting really important? Two reasons
It eliminates any concern over alerting in scent pool. If I think my dog is alerting in a scent trap, I can ask for a target. The dog will either show me exactly where the source is OR checks and realizes it has scent with no source; thus, it resumes searching. As a handler, I know there's scent in the area and that my dog is trying to work it out. Without a target, the handler is going more on faith and this creates very nervous handlers.
The other reason is that sometimes the sources are so small that L.E. just doesn't believe you have a find until you can produce the teeth, finger bones, bone shards, etc They like something they can take to the labs to test. Also, targeting gives your dog a tool to tell you where the scent is strongest as they begin working buried problems where they never get to the source.
Hope this helps,
Jim