Ob training going forward

Scent discrimination

I have been sick for a week. So I have trained mostly ob for last week. I have started make scent discrimination with Freya. I have started this with searching for one stick from a pile of snow. This way she will have start using her and not retrieve the stick. Her nosework started really well but her retrieve was just wild. Freya just threw the stick in the air just before coming to my side. So we needed to do training of holding and retrieving this little piece of wood. It took few times and whole chain started to be pretty nice.

Our next step was to introduce the others sticks. This was done with a net. I put the rest of the sticks under a net and the stick that has my scent before the net. This way she could see them but not be able make mistake. Her nose seems to be open and she notice the clear sticks. Now I just have to do this few times more and then I will start make it without the net. At this point I will reduce the distance from the stick pile just to keep her drive a little lower. Her drive to do this scent work has been more wild enough :D :D

The new jump retrieve in OB4 class

All of my girls have been training the new jump retrieve. This set up has many elements to train. One is the going around mark object and doing sit, down or stand. Especially the sit will be a challenging task from a full speed. I started to work this task in my living room. I used a foam roller as object to go around. Short distance made it easy to learn to positions and also to come back without a extra command. All the girls started this work really well. Pixie and Louise did nicely all the positions and Freya did stand and laying down but her sitting need some extra work.

Next level was to take the distance from the mark even longer way. This point Pixie had a problem of staying by the mark and not returning back. This comes from doing a regular mark work before box or retrieve. I really needed to do a lot work to get her come back. Freya was much better with this because she doesn't have solid ideas for mark. The stand and laying down I can do with both girls from 15 m, but the sit position is still a hard nut to crack. That will need a lot work from a short distance to become really good. In the end I really like these new rules. Much more little things to train!!!!

Operant conditioning lecture

This has been my dream to do for a long time but I have thought I don't know enough. I finally had the guts to do it. I had 1,5 h lecture about the rules and history of operant conditioning. After that I did some demos with Pixie. I think it went quite well and hope at least people got new ideas to training. Clicker training is really important to me and I hope to become better and better all the time. I'm still a rookie but I hope that what I have already learned is worth of sharing.


That's all for now!

MLPF