Post by oksaradt on Feb 23, 2008 13:38:06 GMT -5
There should be a post coming with photos of Murphy and initial buried, but today's 2nd half of his 1st Ten of shallow burieds gave me ample material to discuss on here. I've never succeeded in putting photos in my posts here, so the Admin does it for me.
I set up the 2nd half (5) of the 1 inch burieds yesterday. This time in 4 inches of grass over the soil. I checked the soil temperature (40.2F), the air Temperature (36.3), and the air temperature in the grass (39.2). This meant there should be scent coming up out of the grass for young Murphy (I keep wanting to calling him Skywalker, but I am not going to start talking like Yoda.). Flags were set out with utmost precision 20 feet E and W of the sources plus end flags at the N and S points using a tape measure and a rope. With tall grass I have to do this to get the sources back unless I want to dig up a cubic foot of soil and sift. That it was sprinkling the whole time we worked was incidental. I'll work my dogs in anything but a rain that's heavy enough to squash the scent and push it down into the soil. There's something magical about working a dog in an ice storm, just you, the dog, and the tinking of ice all around you.
My management goal with Murphy was to keep him within the flags and let him do his own thing. Being a 5 month old, Murphy decided it would be so cool to stay outside the flags no matter what I said. Deciding this was an adoleschent personality issue more than scent, Murphy got put in my Xterra for a time out and got to watch Dax work the problems which caused him no end of frustration which could be measured by the tantrum coming from within the X.....darn shame.
Soooo, my challenge was how to communicate to Murphy my wishes. Using the Koehler throw chain training method has no effect on Murphy. Something loud and metallic landing next to him is a curious oddity, but nothing for real concern. In fact they make good chew toys if one is careful not to sling them from side to side and slap one's self in the side of the head (that was entertaining). When I got Murphy out of the Xterra to try again, he got to meet my 30 foot long line. I (as a rule) do not like training dogs in scent on lead as this often leads to the handler inadvertently correcting or cueing the dog in scent. Today, the long line was to teach Murphy the concept of "BACK" and "Leave IT' as he decided that pecans and cat poo were very entertaining. Burieds can start out this way as you have to teach the dog that their is a mystery in them thar soils before it knows to chase that mystery on its own.
Murphy got hooked up to the long line as I let him out of the Xterra. He made a big show of taking it in his mouth and dragging me along for a bit. My job was to keep it as loose as possible without getting in his way and keeping him in the area. Murphy's first "Back" response of verbal first then tug on the line was a venting of frustration (gotta love a dog with attitude). His second response was less of an outburst. By the third correction he was turning before I had to tug on the line. With the pecans and "Leave it" we had the same learning curve. (I should point out that we've been doing "leave it" for some time to the point he'll spit out a milkbone if I growl this command after he's stolen someone else's milkbone.)
Once Murphy figured out what "Back" actually meant we had more order in the world and he worked the problems his way. I'm fine with that. Dax is extremely methodical in her gridding, but Tempe was always prance around then BOOM, scent is here.
Murphy appears (right now) to be somewhere in between. He'll zip around until he gets in scent then he works it in circles till he locates the source. I consider searching style to be the dog's call as they are vastly better at scent than I'll ever be.
With the long line, Murphy knocked out his sixth-to-tenth burieed finds in much quicker time. I basically let him drag it loose unless he was about to leave the area and would place a foot on it, lean down pick up the end, and tell him "back" just before it got tight. This way I minimized an influence on him in scent.
So, Murphy got a big party of tug-of-war after his five finds with only minimal digging on one source (I was happy with that). After that he got to run the indications stations again (off lead) as I'd moved them all yesterday to complex locations where their mere presence did not clue him in to scent. On all but one of the piles, he checked the pile superficially to find no scent, left the pile, then found scent away from the pile and had to work back to the pile. Seems I'd placed all the sources underneath the bricks(between bricks and soil) causing slope and air flow to be more of a factor. After the second one he worked, I definitely got the "you S_O_B" look. This always makes me happy as it means the dog is learning.
Oh and Murphy got a new distraction on the blank pile, a latex glove, which he had to think about. This is important in our work as you always worry if the dog is indicating on latex or nitril as we handle our sources with gloves normally. The people I originally trained with loved to set ten gloves out in a field and ask you to use your dog to see if any glove had HRs on it or not. The pile with deer tissue he checked and blew off for which I verbally praised him for as he was walking away.
So, lots of concepts covered in today's training and lots of issues I'll have to reinforce in future trainings. I'll continue with the long-line-drag until he appears to respond to "BACK" automatically.
Jim
I set up the 2nd half (5) of the 1 inch burieds yesterday. This time in 4 inches of grass over the soil. I checked the soil temperature (40.2F), the air Temperature (36.3), and the air temperature in the grass (39.2). This meant there should be scent coming up out of the grass for young Murphy (I keep wanting to calling him Skywalker, but I am not going to start talking like Yoda.). Flags were set out with utmost precision 20 feet E and W of the sources plus end flags at the N and S points using a tape measure and a rope. With tall grass I have to do this to get the sources back unless I want to dig up a cubic foot of soil and sift. That it was sprinkling the whole time we worked was incidental. I'll work my dogs in anything but a rain that's heavy enough to squash the scent and push it down into the soil. There's something magical about working a dog in an ice storm, just you, the dog, and the tinking of ice all around you.
My management goal with Murphy was to keep him within the flags and let him do his own thing. Being a 5 month old, Murphy decided it would be so cool to stay outside the flags no matter what I said. Deciding this was an adoleschent personality issue more than scent, Murphy got put in my Xterra for a time out and got to watch Dax work the problems which caused him no end of frustration which could be measured by the tantrum coming from within the X.....darn shame.
Soooo, my challenge was how to communicate to Murphy my wishes. Using the Koehler throw chain training method has no effect on Murphy. Something loud and metallic landing next to him is a curious oddity, but nothing for real concern. In fact they make good chew toys if one is careful not to sling them from side to side and slap one's self in the side of the head (that was entertaining). When I got Murphy out of the Xterra to try again, he got to meet my 30 foot long line. I (as a rule) do not like training dogs in scent on lead as this often leads to the handler inadvertently correcting or cueing the dog in scent. Today, the long line was to teach Murphy the concept of "BACK" and "Leave IT' as he decided that pecans and cat poo were very entertaining. Burieds can start out this way as you have to teach the dog that their is a mystery in them thar soils before it knows to chase that mystery on its own.
Murphy got hooked up to the long line as I let him out of the Xterra. He made a big show of taking it in his mouth and dragging me along for a bit. My job was to keep it as loose as possible without getting in his way and keeping him in the area. Murphy's first "Back" response of verbal first then tug on the line was a venting of frustration (gotta love a dog with attitude). His second response was less of an outburst. By the third correction he was turning before I had to tug on the line. With the pecans and "Leave it" we had the same learning curve. (I should point out that we've been doing "leave it" for some time to the point he'll spit out a milkbone if I growl this command after he's stolen someone else's milkbone.)
Once Murphy figured out what "Back" actually meant we had more order in the world and he worked the problems his way. I'm fine with that. Dax is extremely methodical in her gridding, but Tempe was always prance around then BOOM, scent is here.
Murphy appears (right now) to be somewhere in between. He'll zip around until he gets in scent then he works it in circles till he locates the source. I consider searching style to be the dog's call as they are vastly better at scent than I'll ever be.
With the long line, Murphy knocked out his sixth-to-tenth burieed finds in much quicker time. I basically let him drag it loose unless he was about to leave the area and would place a foot on it, lean down pick up the end, and tell him "back" just before it got tight. This way I minimized an influence on him in scent.
So, Murphy got a big party of tug-of-war after his five finds with only minimal digging on one source (I was happy with that). After that he got to run the indications stations again (off lead) as I'd moved them all yesterday to complex locations where their mere presence did not clue him in to scent. On all but one of the piles, he checked the pile superficially to find no scent, left the pile, then found scent away from the pile and had to work back to the pile. Seems I'd placed all the sources underneath the bricks(between bricks and soil) causing slope and air flow to be more of a factor. After the second one he worked, I definitely got the "you S_O_B" look. This always makes me happy as it means the dog is learning.
Oh and Murphy got a new distraction on the blank pile, a latex glove, which he had to think about. This is important in our work as you always worry if the dog is indicating on latex or nitril as we handle our sources with gloves normally. The people I originally trained with loved to set ten gloves out in a field and ask you to use your dog to see if any glove had HRs on it or not. The pile with deer tissue he checked and blew off for which I verbally praised him for as he was walking away.
So, lots of concepts covered in today's training and lots of issues I'll have to reinforce in future trainings. I'll continue with the long-line-drag until he appears to respond to "BACK" automatically.
Jim