Day 191

First there was the retrieve class, which this Saturday consisted of two Dobermans and a Golden. The problem as the picture sort of shows is that the Golden is chugging along, well, like a Golden. Meanwhile neither of the Dobes is making much progress considering the amount of time that has passed.
Here the Golden has been excused to go practice the "advanced" stuff and Sanity has stepped into the picture to try and set an example for the other two.
Not really. What really was going on was Sanity seemed to feel she should be doing something more than just sitting there, so I gave her a more interesting job.

After the retrieve class was over everyone hung around to watch me working Sanity on the beginnings of scent discrimination work. No one was very interested in watching her practice picking up the metal article correctly. Nope, what they all wanted to see was the scent or should I say shell game we were playing. Here are a few pictures to show how it is going.

First she has to hold a sit stay until I send her. My command is "find it" coupled with a single motion hand signal indicating the direction I want her to take. Of course right now that direction is straight in front of us.


Here she is beginning to work the "pile" in her search for the correct one.


Here she is indicating the correct one. Nothing distracts her from what she is doing. And for those of you who were so worried about the fact that she wasn't being given the bit of meat, worry no longer. She has perfected the technique of flipping the cap off and inhaling the bit of meat long before I could ever manage to stop her. All this is doing is making her more certain that this is an interesting thing to do. Tomorrow I will be changing the rules of the game.