I had a really nice night last night. I got to ‘school’ early, and grabbed a short nap (or maybe I just rested my eyes, but it felt relaxing.) Then I went into K9 Tailshakers and sat with Laura (the Operations Manager), talking to staff and taking messages off the phone.
It was the last night of both of my classes. The earlier class is continuing Nose Work, for dogs that are all ready imprinted on odor (or imprinting on odor). One of the yellow labs in the class (Rudy) wasn’t there, so the focus was on Sandy — who had never been tested on odor alone.
See, the way I teach Nose Work follows the National Association of Canine Scent Work (NACSW) method, starting with the dog learning to hunt for either food or a toy, and then “pairing” the food or toy with the target scent (Sweet Birch, which smells similar to Wintergreen.)
Unfortunately, people are impatient and pushy, and tend to drop the pairing too soon, but Sandy’s owner had been really patient, and she’d gone through the entire class — which started in November & was broken up by several weeks of illness and terrible weather — pairing the target scent with Sandy’s treats.
Her first search with scent only, Sandy stopped and wedged her big ol’ Labby nose into the appropriate carton, and Sandy’s owner gave her a quick treat right next to that carton. We then went back to pairing the scent with a treat for a few rounds, and ended with a couple more unpaired searches.
It was fun and a great success.
The next class also had only 1 student present — a little wirehaired Jack Russell Terrier named Poppy. Poppy grabs my hand with her mouth and then stops and holds it, and then runs away. She’s SUPER high energy.
Since it was the last class of the session, I paired her treats with the scent — her owner has scent at home, because she was in my first classes with her previous Jack Russell Terrier, Ivory. We ran six to eight container searches, and then one search with hides outside of the containers. It was a great time.
The other thing that was awesome was that Laura and several others told me that Nietzsche is now being run in the “ala carte” activity program — some fitness work, agility games, and running on a treadmill. A couple of people told me that they’d tried to introduce Nietzsche to the treadmill, and that it was really funny. My guess: He let them lead him right up to it, then probably leapt over it and ran around and around like a big old goofball.
:)
Unfortunately, the next session of classes won’t start until 2/29. I’m hoping some past students who were in advanced classes will return and challenge their dogs — it’s so much fun.
I was lucky to get back to the shelter site while the PADS coordinator was still there. Apparently, they no longer pay any attention to requests for ‘courtesy calls’ for those of us who work part time hours in the evening. I’m not sure how to address that, but I have almost a month to do so!