In my last post I mentioned that Rundle had a set back with the scent articles and there seemed to be some confusion there - lots of tasting and picking up random articles and not committing to the correct one as quickly as he had been previously. After a couple days of this, we just took a break. We didn't do articles for nearly a week. Tonight I brought them out again, made the set up easy by me being close to the pile and having 6 un-scented articles out, two each of leather, metal and wood. I started with his favorite (wood) and he did two perfect scenting/retrieves from the pile. No tasting, no guessing. He was happy and confident searching for the scented article. We then moved to the leather article and again, two perfect sends with no hesitation. When we started the session, I had planned on not having him search for the metal article. Although he can usually finds it quickly, it is the one that he hesitates the most on bringing it back to me out of the pile. But, he was doing so well with the other articles, I decided to try a metal one. He was spot on and picked it up with no hesitation. Phew!!!
Where to go from here? We will probably stick to this format for a few sessions as long as Rundle continues to be successful. Then I will start to gradually increase the difficulty again - more distance from the pile, more un-scented articles in the pile, etc.
This was a good reminder to go back and make things simpler when our dog is struggling. Also, sometimes taking a little break is good!!
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