Friday, July 31, 2009

What's that smell?

This morning we had a nose work session.
After an initial confusion as to whether the pool was available before nosework, SpaceMonkey figured out the game and was happy to play.

Our favorite Rotti had no problems with the added distraction of crap piled up all over and an open garage door.
For this session, we met at an undisclosed home with a garage that had at least one car lane vacated of "stuff". We will not say who's garage this was. Although of all of us, this person was the only one that actually had room to park a car in the garage, the undisclosed individual was still embarrassed by the clutter.
For this nosework session, we upped the difficulty level by not only having alot of clutter in the garage, but we also left the garage door open. We started out by making it simple and having a line of boxes, but soon all the dogs were searching a wide area and having successes.

SpaceMonkey is searching a line here. She had no problem finding her toy.
Once found, we help in getting the toy out and playing with her at the box.
She seems happy to be playing this game. Maybe missing the pool a little....
But finding her search object without a problem.
Tazzie was very efficient at finding his food pouch. Just a little hesitant in pulling the food pouch out of the box. He is happy to play and was sad when it wasn't his turn.
Rocky played too. He LOVES this game and had a great time finding his ball. He also is somewhat hesitant to pull his toy out of the box. Something I will work on.

Is it in here?
After a few successes at the row of boxes, we made the searches more complex. Grabbing clutter and adding that to the mix. SpaceMonkey looks happy to be looking for her toy.
Brazen played as well and she absolutely loves this game.
I'm not sure, but I think Tricky enjoys the game too.
Sometimes after Tricky-woo searches, we have to rebuild the boxes. He is very enthusiastic about nosework.

We had a great morning. All in all we noticed that when things on the road caused distractions, it took a while to re-focus. Other than that, all of the dogs did a great job in this new environment. I guess someone else in our group is going to have to clean out their garage so we can having another session!

We took some video. If you are bored and want to watch some of the action, click here.

For more info on the sport of K9 Nosework, click here.

2 comments:

Trish said...

I recognize that refrigerator! Why wasn't the finn working!!! Was she in the pool?

vici whisner said...

Right now I'm working Rocky and Tazz. This is really a sport that reative dogs can excel in as the dogs are totally separated.

Both Tazz and Rocky can focus on the task and not be distracted by other dogs.

Fin does do the nosework, but less than Tazz and Rocky. I'd actually like to compete with the Rocks.