I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks – busy with work, busy with the dogs.

Toka & I spent time with a friend earlier today.  I wanted to get a baseline of his nose work skills.  We’ve signed up for Introduction to Nose Work through Fenzi Dog Sports Academy.  Class starts December 1st.

Although Kiyo is doing well in training at the NWII level, I’ve not really spent much time setting foundations for Toka.  My plan is to use the class to do so.  However, we have played about with nose work a bit.

Here’s where we are today

In this clip, we add a bit of proofing by s-l-o-w-l-y bringing the cookies toward the ‘source’ (tin with odor).  Once the reward hand gets close, I bring the reward in swiftly.

Toka’s ‘slow cookie’ test

We also moved onto containers.  Very happy with his work!   Here’s Toka’s very first container search.

To make sure he wasn’t just scoping out the container he knew held the hide, we put out containers that looked exactly alike.  Again, he did well, though he was a little less certain of his decision.  All in all, a good start.

Test with look-alike containers