Putting our money where our mouth is

I have no money, but I do have a mouth...tho I suspect fingers is probably what's needed for this discussion lol.

I do NO work of any kind with my dogs aside from dabbling in conformation...but I love to watch a squirrel act a fool in the yard...zip here double back and then shoot up a tree, then watch Sully Ellie, or RC, upon being let out...follow it's track exactly...zigging when the critter zigged and zagging where it zagged.

The drive of a hound is to find it and BAY at it...and hopefully, eat it. Probably very different than the drive a Sch dog uses! head up? never heard of such a thing...oh you mean that thing that Cleo does when she smells something and walks right past a perfectly good crumb on the floor! LMBO!

When my hounds were checking around for goldfish in the grass today I loved watching their long ears stir the ground as they moved their muzzles side to side in a sweeping motion...you could tell the exact time they found something hot because their body would tense more, and their upright tail would wiggle just at the very tip. Then before you knew it...*crunch crunch crunch*

Interesting reading...hope you guys didn't mind a post from the lighter side of things!

rwbeagles

The drive of a hound is to find it and BAY at it...and hopefully, eat it. Probably very different than the drive a Sch dog uses!

The very best dog that i have ever taught to track was a beagle. It was brilliant and a great accurate tracker that needed hardly any training what so ever. The drive is very very similar, but the end manifestation is somewhat different. Your breed bays and alerts, some breeds point, others want to retrieve, others go to bite. This beagle was obsessed.

No self respecting beagle puts it's head up other than to grab food of something high. We know that :)

All posts are welcome here! Particually lighter funny ones!

Ellie was seriously considered for the Beagle Brigade that does the detection work at the borders and in aiports. They had us do any number of "tests" on video for them to observe how food motivated, tenacious, and driven she was. I was not suprised that she passed all criteria. They didn't like her hips tho (OFA Fair) so they eventally passed her up. Given how she soars after the tennis ball now at age 5 or so...they missed an opportunity! We love her tho, our little "flunk-ee" lol.

rwbeagles

Ellie was seriously considered for the Beagle Brigade that does the detection work at the borders and in aiports. They had us do any number of "tests" on video for them to observe how food motivated, tenacious, and driven she was. I was not suprised that she passed all criteria. They didn't like her hips tho (OFA Fair) so they eventally passed her up. Given how she soars after the tennis ball now at age 5 or so...they missed an opportunity! We love her tho, our little "flunk-ee" lol.

And they do look pretty cute and unthreatening. They are used in a similar role here.  Of course i reckon that they should use oodles of poodles.

Luci and Sam would be fine. Luci would thieve anything eatable, and is very social. She is so literal though. If you taught her to indicate when she smells an apple for example, and you accidentally used a black suitcase, then she would only indicate again for apples in black cases only. :)

She has one failing. When it comes to other dogs, you completely understand why bitches are called bitches....

rwbeagles

They didn't like her hips tho (OFA Fair) so they eventally passed her up.

Is that common, to pass on dogs that pass OFA?  I mean with GSDs, we will gladly work good dogs that are borderline or even mild (as long as they are physically able, and not being forced to endure pain because of work).  I know someone with a MACH agility dog who is OFA mild, the dog is very active and healthy and shows no symptoms.  Heck in Germany you can register and breed "noch zugelassen" which is like OFA borderline or mild, because to ban borderline dogs (or dogs that are passing with fair) cuts out so much of the gene pool and so many great dogs that might not look correct on films but never have problems other than arthritis at old age.

for them...yes it was common. This was before she had her OFA rating tho...these were xrays they specifically requested for THEIR vet to review. She was short of 2 at that time. After she was two I did them for my own reasons (breeding) and she came back a Fair.

They said that a lot of the work these hounds do is jumping up and down onto conveyor belts and such...they thought she might deteriorate faster because of the "stuff" that ended up making her a Fair. OFA wasn't a big deal to them...even had she been a Good there was still a chance that THEIR vet could see things they didn't like. *shrug*

I could see thier point because if Ellie was working I already know she would work for food no matter HOW she felt internally. She is majorly stoic...and food is important enough that she will endure quite a bit. Like I have always said, IMO a dog that works hard, long, and daily, is not really a testament to soundness as much as a testament to drive.

I watched Shadow hunt a squirrel today. (No catch, no tasty raw snack.) He spots the prey and stands motionless. Then, quietly, step by cautious step, approaches closer. Finally, the squirrel starts to move, Shadow gives chase. The squirrel levitates up a tree, to live another day. And Shadow sniffs where the squirrel was and the path he took. And then marks it with his own scent, both pee and sebaceous glands in his paws.

ron2

The squirrel levitates up a tree, to live another day. And Shadow sniffs where the squirrel was and the path he took. And then marks it with his own scent, both pee and sebaceous glands in his paws.

Oh yes! Quite a few dogs do this and i don't stop them at all in the early phases. It means sort of i think that "this track is mine" and often marks an increase in intensity in drive and ability.

I often get into trouble a bit for this. At about this stage, i will put a dog through T1 which is the very first track. Some of the stricter judges do get a bit upset with it, but i want the dog to show that it owns the track in a trial. After this, a few words normally ceases the behaviour. :)

Liesje

My tracking problem has been getting my dog to show the exact same behavior and intensity regardless of the conditions.  He tracks fine genetically, and he tracks "correctly" for SchH because he was taught to footstep.  The problem is that his style will change a bit depending on the conditions, which is absolutely natural, but not "correct" for SchH (where tracking is more of an obedience exercise, really).

Hi You have got the correct context. I work hard on having a ton of dirve so that when i restrict my dog i get a very positive response. You really have to cover all conditions and go back to higher ratios of food and/or articles and or unusual things on the track for windy conditions, heavy scent conditions etc etd. You can't skip this. it is proofing.

I have got my older dog to footstep track on cue. Normally i track with no lead tension at all. I just use lead tension and it encoruages her to go towards the center. Some dogs actually do the opposite.  Lead tension on a harness correctly applied gets that opposiition reflex going and often becomes centering.That reflex is quite good to use. There is some stuff from the Baileys which suggests that when we wish an animal to use a certain channel or path that it is best to provide strong information where the channel is rather than limit only signals. Slo as they move towards the limit we need to gradually increase tension. I heard of some work done with sub threshold electric currents which rings true, but i can not locate it. Certainly audible signals would help to. You could almost do this yourself!!!

Also if you have that track drive built up, the reward at the end is really good, then if your dog's head comes up you can stop and as soon as his head goes down you can resume.  You can do erratic little zones that are dosed with food, articles everywhere.Don't let self reward happen for the bad stuff, but reward heavily for the good stuff.

It is a hassle becuase it goes against what the dogs instinct says.The brain is screaming " put your head up the scent is good enough and better there" and we are providing conflict which says "don't do that do somethings else".  We have to give good reason to resolve the conflict our way

I have always had a struggle with article indication. i usually take it off track and teach it hugely positively, but they are always so heavily track orientated that they will try and skip them. I have learnt to be really quick if they indicate an article and let them go really fast. If they wish to not indicate the article, i act like a very dumb tree trunk till they do. Luci skids into articles with a sit. Sam drops and is posied to move at any moment. Some of the most hilarious moments with Luci is watching her "pretend" an article isn't there so that she doesn't have to indicate it :)

 GSDs are a dream to track. I am looking forward to working with my own one in the not too distant future. I appreciate other breeds too, they all have their own style, but GSDs in the literal sense of the word do start out ahead.

This is a new context for this column. One of my concerns in the doggy world is that theories get proposed and don't really get tested. It would be great if there was no fall out, but often there is. So if we know tools work, and if there is a  lot of evidence to use them then for the sake of our dogs and may be our client's dogs if we are trainers, we should understand and use them.

If we wish to try something new, then we have a duty to undertstand the process well,and  be able to support this with solid evidence.

 If you look at my signature, i am the rather proud handler of a dog with a UD title. Luci got this title a week ago, but i have been travelling and haven't been posting. That came with a lot of plain hard work and application of the dreaded CC OC and understadning of how affective behaviours may work. Poor Luci developed noise phobias at about the 18 month level. They were really hard to deal with. Many people would have dismissed them and made them worse by believing that "she was putting them on" (I heard that a few times :( ) I stuck to my guns and systematically desensitised her to them over a 8 month period. I listened and worked with a Vet Behavourist, worked with proven R+ trainers and at the end of this period had a dog that just wanted to be in a trail environment and couldn't give a dam about car noise.

One of the things that you DON'T do in this scenario is start waving toys around, or provoking play. Wrong  state wrong time wrong place. I can tell you that to do so is to land up with a nasty mess of cross associaited states and behaviours. It is a soluton for nothing.

We were travelling quite well, and then Luci started missing our seekback article and the occassional SD article. It was hard to work out. i guess that if i was more to the trad side i would have read it as her being stubborn or something. What had happened is that we had started using a strong dose of cortisone eye drops which had affected her scenting. Within 8 days of removing her drops, we had a much happier dog and our second pass. I was so confident that i told my wife that she should come to the next trial as Luci would get it and she did.

Our UD is held outside. We onlu use rope barriers. We have a much longer signals exercise , our SD is three articles not two, and we have this dam seekback (An article is placed somewhere in a heelign sequence by a judge and our dog has to find it). We only ever stop for hot weather over about 95 degrees. It is an exception to get a pass in a ring let alone a good score.

I do train Luci "in drive". I don't quite see it as that but that will do. I spend a lot of time even at this advanced level making sure that she thinks the ring is a great place to be and that doing the various exercises is fun. At the other end of the scale i don't allow certain behaviours AND hardly ever get them.

I guess that doing UD is one way that i find out whether what i think works actually does under very testing conditions.