This is the third class in my popular Drills and Skills series. With all training we need to maintain skills, progress skills, and then be a little more ambitious to try something more difficult! Our dogs are amazing and are usually up for the challenge! They are capable of more than we think! This class will push you more out of your comfort level so make sure your dog will be up for it too!
This is a perfect class to get new ideas for setting up your training. The focus will be on hide placement challenges and easy to setup drills that can mostly be done inside or in small spaces. Some drills will require larger spaces. Handling review and suggestions will be included in feedback as well.
Details will be provided for each drill - purpose (why), how to set up, what to expect and some boundaries/rules for each search! Since setups will be more challenging, there will also be some less demanding but fun and different setups! Training new and different setups will help our dogs work through different scent puzzles and challenges.
Teaching Approach
My fundamental approach in teaching is to keep things simple. Peel it away and then push a little more. We should always be working on closing gaps, maintaining skills and achieving fluency and growth. I will assess your handling and mechanics where applicable to see if it's helping or hindering the search.
Lecture content is written with video examples. They are designed to be watched and to follow the ideas presented in the lecture. Lecture videos may run from 30s to 3 minutes long. The lectures are designed to help a student understand the purpose of the drill and how it might vary by dog. Care is taken to keep lectures short. Each week 3 drills are rolled out at the start of the week. This class will work best for students who learn by reading text lectures, watching videos and who like having structured lesson plans.
This class will have a Teacher's Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook study group to help the Bronze and Silver students! Directions for joining will be in the classroom after you register.
Julie Symons (she/her) has been involved in dog sports for over 25 years. Starting with her mix, Dreyfus, in flyball, she went on to train and compete in conformation, agility, obedience, herding and tracking with her first Belgian tervuren, Rival. Rival was the first CH OTCH MACH Belgian...(Click here for full bio and to view Julie's upcoming courses)
The target audience for this class are teams trialing or training at the NW3/Elite/Detective levels and who are looking to set more challenging setups for their dogs.
Supplies include normal nosework supplies/containers.
Drill: Analyzing your inaccessible hide skills and challenging your dog with close inaccessible hides.
We’ve worked inaccessible hides in training and encountered them at trials. And we’ve all encountered or should be training for close hides. We can up the challenge with setting up close inaccessible hides!
There are 3 kinds of inaccessible hides. Each kind will have varying degrees of being inaccessible - meaning that some will be less or more inaccessible:
Contained (in a drawer, cabinet)
Deep (in a stack of chairs, deep behind a barrier of objects)
Elevated (above the dogs nose up to ~10 feet)
One of the challenges is that dogs are not always as proficient on inaccessibles or handlers not as confident to read/call them. Early on, dogs may leave when trying to solve an inaccessible to search for something easier. What search hasn't had at least one easy accessible hide?
Before setting up 2 close inaccessibles, ensure or analyze your dogs skill set for a single inaccessible hide of each of the 3 types listed above.
Once you are confident that your dog can solve the varying types of inaccessible hides, set up some close inaccessibles and let's see how your dog does! Ideally you should age your hides at least 20 minutes. Make sure you are using 2 different odors for these setups.
Below are 3 scenarios:
2 Contained close hides
1 Deep and 1 Contained hide
1 Elevated and 1 Contained hide (2 examples)
*Warning that any close hide near an Elevated hide will be a more challenging setup since it would be easy for the dog to believe solving one is solving the whole scent picture.
When placing your hides, consider how the odor will move or be contained so that the 2 odors couldn't be honestly solved as one inaccessible. Plan for hides about 5-15 feet apart. Contained hides can be placed closer as well as closer in combination with an elevated hide. Two elevated hides should be placed farther apart so they can each be worked individually.
2 Contained Close Hides
Here is an example of 2 contained close hides. Hides were not aged. The heat was running from the vent on that back wall between the 2 hides. This was pretty straight forward for my dogs. I would consider these as lower degree inaccessibles as the hides were near the door of the cabinets and the one on the left had an opening on the back. What I loved about this search is that Drac jumped on the couch! He is not one to climb/jump up on things in a search so it was great to see. The heater was surely blowing the odor onto the couch.
2 min video example:
1 Deep and 1 Contained Close Hides
Here's an example taking it on the road using an exterior patio. Hides were aged for one hour. One hide is in a metal drawer (pretty solid unit!) and one deep in the right corner. I try to wait as long as I might in a blind to see if they'll stick with it or leave.
2 min video example:
1 Elevated and 1 Contained Close Hides
This example was complicated by the contained hide (in a drawer) being a bit deep into the corner with a big roll of mats in the way. It would be easy for the dog to believe solving one is solving the whole scent picture. The hides were placed by a student in one of my local classes. The hides were aged about 20 minutes.
One hide is about 7 feet high near the top of the door. The other hide is 3 feet away in a closed drawer about 3.5 feet lower than the elevated hide! The view is a little hard to see on these videos with the weave poles in the way and angle of the video. The most interesting difference between running both dogs is my handling with one being blind and the other when I know where the hides are.
I show the known hide placement run first. I do "keep" her there after finding the first hide, but I DO generally handle that way - not influencing and letting my dog pick where to go next. With Drac (2nd video clip), I am running blind. Starting at 1:17 Drac is showing inaccessible behavior. He never oriented up but looking back it could also look like he is caught between 2 hides. I don't even consider that my student would place another hide there in that corner. I’m being timed and rushed the exit off that hide by influencing him to move to another area. Whether he would have solved the other one, I don’t know. The important take away is that we can't appear to help them find 2 close hides, but instead handle the same. Note: only the teams that knew there were 2 hides got them both which shows how easily we can influence our dogs to find hides!
2 min video example:
I also set this same scenario on vehicles. Hides were aged for one hour. I did set them a bit further apart about 18 feet apart. What I love about this video is that Moxie, who can be worried about tight spaces, climbed under the trailer hitch to get to the hide! What is also nice about the video is that the snow flurries show the wind direction. Steadliy blowing to the right. When Drac ran it, the snow was swirling more and changing directions. It took him a minute longer to find both hides (video not shown).
A sampling of what prior students have said about this course ...
New course for the February 2023 session.
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Instructor: Julie Symons
