Scent Discrimination

[Seita]

At training the other night we were discussing the idea that using a leather leash can cause confusion with some dogs for scent discrimination and or seek back with the leather articles. My girl struggles a little with the leather article in her scent work, she finds the wood and metal article really easily but tends to doubt herself on the leather and often brings me back a metal or wood article first. After this discussion I am wondering if this idea of a leather leash causing confusion could be correct? Just wanting thoughts and ideas about this from other triallers.

Personally, I don't know about this, I think an experienced dog wouldn't have a problem with this but perhaps the leather leash might have an effect on an inexperience dog? My girl certainly is inexperienced at the moment considering we haven't even started trialling in UD yet! I am considering switching leashes for a while to test this theory out... several judges up here in QLD seem to think that this can and does affect dogs' scent work.

[Nekhbet]

leather can also have a distinctive smell as it is porous and tends to absorb a mixture of smells especially if treated.

grab some beeswax and rub it into your leash to make it distinctive. Sounds like your dog is not 100% on the leather article more then confusing it with your leash and hence just goes for what she does know to get her reward.

[Seita]

leather can also have a distinctive smell as it is porous and tends to absorb a mixture of smells especially if treated.

grab some beeswax and rub it into your leash to make it distinctive. Sounds like your dog is not 100% on the leather article more then confusing it with your leash and hence just goes for what she does know to get her reward.

I don't think it's the leash either but at the same time she knows which article it is as she tends to pick the right one up at lest once but then doubts herself and brings something else. She probably gets it right about 75% of the time and whenever she does get it wrong she does what I just described before and seems to doubt herself that she has got it right. I am still training this with her so am not too worried and she is improving.

The reason for the thread was more to discuss whether the use of a leather leash would affect a dog when doing scent work. Some people at training have stopped using a leather lead for this reason but I am undecided about whether it is really something that confuses the dog or poor training on their behalf?

[OSoSwift]

I would say, nope probably not

I would say any dog getting confused is because they either don't really know the exercise and are not overly confident yet, or as leather is leather it is really hard to get lingering smells out of the articles even when thay are aired correctly.

[ness]

I would tend to agree I don't think there would be any confusion rather its just the fact that leather has its own smell about it - more so then wood and metal. Leather also retains the scent better. When my girl was learning we started on metal, then did wood and attempted leather last.

My baby will be starting/has started on woods as she still isn't totally keen on her metal articles.

Besides which the only time they are on-lead in the UD ring is when they walk into the ring. Not sure how you use a lead when you train most of UD as its the dog doing stuff independently away from the handler .

Edited August 27, 2009 by ness

[kathq]

Dont want to hijack your thread Seita but am so glad you asked this question as have recently started on the UD stuff with my girl and picked the scent discrim to begin with.

Going really well on the metal and wood but needs two goes to get the leather right probably half the time picking up the wrong one first. She is working really hard to find the right one not just doing a dash and grab so I was wondering if I was not airing the sets for long enough as they still smell quite strongly leathery if you know what I mean so she is having trouble finding my smell maybe?.

We have always used a leather leash but she is never on it in training and is having no issue with the seek back article.

Any help greatly apreciated.

[Seita]

Dont want to hijack your thread Seita but am so glad you asked this question as have recently started on the UD stuff with my girl and picked the scent discrim to begin with.

Going really well on the metal and wood but needs two goes to get the leather right probably half the time picking up the wrong one first. She is working really hard to find the right one not just doing a dash and grab so I was wondering if I was not airing the sets for long enough as they still smell quite strongly leathery if you know what I mean so she is having trouble finding my smell maybe?.

We have always used a leather leash but she is never on it in training and is having no issue with the seek back article.

Any help greatly apreciated.

That pretty much describes what my dog is doing although she gets it a bit more often than your girl does by the sound of it. I only use the leash to walk to training and very very occasionally a bit of heeling on lead which is why I didn't think the leash would be the cause. I think the problem is that the leather has a stronger scent of it's own and it holds the scent a lot better to. So chances are that the leather articles will still smell like you even though you've aired them really well. I tend to really really scent my leather article at this stage to try and make it really strong smelling so it stands out and I think as she gets better and more experienced she will be able to pick out the hottest scent from the pile even though the rest may smell vaguely of me.

That said I am still experimenting with the leash thing out of curiosity. I think the reason some people believe this theory is that having the leather scent on your hands (from the leash) may slighty mask or confuse your scent on the leather article which could cause problems. I might believe this if I used the leash alot in training but I don't use it much at all. But I'm still willing to give it a go and see if there is any affect.

[Nekhbet]

another thing to think about - did she start with one leather item or did you mix it up? If she is now on different items her confusion may be coming from the fact the scent changes, or the article changes absorbed smells so often due to its organic nature. It smells familiar but she is not 100% if it is the right article.

work on the leather article by itself and work on sight as well as smell. Do not let her doubt herself, if you use the clicker as soon as she heads over to the article *click* so she doesnt have a chance to double guess herself. If she smells leather then make it an automatic reaction.

If you touch the article as well are you sure it is not your smell she was originally trained to and not the leather? You would have to really be soaking in your smells in order to over-ride the leather smell for a dog. But it could have been enough originally for her to be picking up in the first place and now its petering off she's confused. Have someone else touch it only and see what happens

Edited August 27, 2009 by Nekhbet

[Ptolomy]

Leather is the hardest of the three for the dog to get right because of the strong natural smell.

When teaching leather I use the same leather article to begin with for the first few weeks - this way it is strongly smelling of me which seems to help.

I don't believe that using a leather lead would make any difference at all.

[Seita]

Nekhbet - in my case I started with metal, then wood and then leather. I start with only the same type of article, so with leather there was only 2 out there, progressed to 3, 4 etc then other articles. I never progressed to the next stage until I acheived a certain level of accuracy which in my case was 100%, if she could do 10 or 20 in a row (over a few sessions usually) then I would move to the next level. She had realy only started doubting herself on the leather at club training where I walk in on the leather leash. At home I don't use a leash at all and she doesn't seem to have the problem, but at the same time I haven't been training this very much of late so it could just be lack of practice that has caused this doubting.

I might try to do a few more regular sessions both at home and out in public limiting it just to leathers to proof her on them a bit better.

[kathq]

Leather is the hardest of the three for the dog to get right because of the strong natural smell.

When teaching leather I use the same leather article to begin with for the first few weeks - this way it is strongly smelling of me which seems to help.

I don't believe that using a leather lead would make any difference at all.

So do you think I should use the same leather article for a couple of weeks in a row and air the rest of the set for 4 or 5 days as per normal? I am rotating two and a half sets at the moment. We started with the Sue H method of lots of different things from around the house to bring back, then started substituting articles, metal first followed by wood then the leather. Having said all that maybe I am asking/expecting too much too soon as we only started on this less than 4 weeks ago. She just seemed to picking it up so quick.

in case you hadn't guessed I have never trained for this level before but my girl seems to be having the time of her life.

[Ptolomy]

Leather is the hardest of the three for the dog to get right because of the strong natural smell.

When teaching leather I use the same leather article to begin with for the first few weeks - this way it is strongly smelling of me which seems to help.

I don't believe that using a leather lead would make any difference at all.

So do you think I should use the same leather article for a couple of weeks in a row and air the rest of the set for 4 or 5 days as per normal? I am rotating two and a half sets at the moment. We started with the Sue H method of lots of different things from around the house to bring back, then started substituting articles, metal first followed by wood then the leather. Having said all that maybe I am asking/expecting too much too soon as we only started on this less than 4 weeks ago. She just seemed to picking it up so quick.

in case you hadn't guessed I have never trained for this level before but my girl seems to be having the time of her life.

Goodonya for giving it a go

I am not sure if you have been having issues with leather or not. As I said I use the same leather article for a couple of weeks until the dog is really sure of the exercise. So if you are having issues then give this a try.

let us all know how you get on.

[Ptolomy]

Just to hijack the thread for a second Kathq were you are the Ekka?

[kathq]

Just to hijack the thread for a second Kathq were you are the Ekka?

Thanks for the tip with the leather dont think it is a problem yet but I need all the help I can get.

Nope not me at the Ekka. Was at the state trials though, was the only GSP there. Had a not so succesful weekend there as we were still working out exactly what was needed in the Open ring. :D My mission was to control her youthful enthusiasm long enough to actually qualie which we managed a couple of weeks ago.

Saw your boy work there and was in awe, walked away saying to myself "one day"....

[RubyStar]

Saw your boy work there and was in awe, walked away saying to myself "one day"....

I think we all do that :D

[Seita]

Just to hijack the thread for a second Kathq were you are the Ekka?

Thanks for the tip with the leather dont think it is a problem yet but I need all the help I can get.

Nope not me at the Ekka. Was at the state trials though, was the only GSP there. Had a not so succesful weekend there as we were still working out exactly what was needed in the Open ring. My mission was to control her youthful enthusiasm long enough to actually qualie which we managed a couple of weeks ago.

Saw your boy work there and was in awe, walked away saying to myself "one day"....

Sounds very similar to my state trials experience!! I guess I will see you in the UD ring in the next year or so then!

[kathq]

Sounds very similar to my state trials experience!! I guess I will see you in the UD ring in the next year or so then! :cool:

Crossing everything I've got and if the gods of dogs are smiling yes please!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Czara]

Seita I never had any problem with scent discrimination with my german shepherds, even though I had a leather lead that sometimes I would tie up and "lose" during our walks to practice seekback.

I'm wondering whether it might be something to do with the praise you give for the wood and metal articles, particularly the metal. Being a more unnatural and difficult exercise, perhaps you give more praise for retrieving these? So perhaps the dog might be thinking it gets more brownie points for bringing back the metal? Maybe I'm wrong, but just a thought worth considering

[Seita]

Go figure, every session I've done since I posted this she's got the leather with no issues whatsoever!!

But I do have another question about scent discrimination after having a good read of the rules yesterday. I know you get penalised for every incorrect article that a dog picks up and currently Ella tends to grab at virtually every single one until she gets the right one. I know she is inexperienced and I find that the more I train this the less she does it. Especially in the same session, the first one she will go for every article on there and then by the time I send her out for the last one she doesn't tend to grab as much.

My question is with practice do you think (from your experiences) that she will depend more on her nose and stop with the grabbing of articles? She doesn't bring them back she just picks them up and drops them again and most of the time only brings the right ones back. But obviously I want her to stop picking them up as she'll run out of points super quick if she keeps doing this. Is there any way I can discourage her from doing this or should I just wait and let her figure it out?

[kallistar]

Go figure, every session I've done since I posted this she's got the leather with no issues whatsoever!!

But I do have another question about scent discrimination after having a good read of the rules yesterday. I know you get penalised for every incorrect article that a dog picks up and currently Ella tends to grab at virtually every single one until she gets the right one. I know she is inexperienced and I find that the more I train this the less she does it. Especially in the same session, the first one she will go for every article on there and then by the time I send her out for the last one she doesn't tend to grab as much.

My question is with practice do you think (from your experiences) that she will depend more on her nose and stop with the grabbing of articles? She doesn't bring them back she just picks them up and drops them again and most of the time only brings the right ones back. But obviously I want her to stop picking them up as she'll run out of points super quick if she keeps doing this. Is there any way I can discourage her from doing this or should I just wait and let her figure it out?

Hi Seita,

As time goes on she will get better with it.. What ever you do, do not growl at this learning stage.. ignore it, cause when she is more confident in what she is doing she will stop grabbing every one. (this only my opinion other might have a different view on it)

Have fun in UD, I sometime wish that I was back doing UD instead of UDX.... grrrrrrrrr multiple retrieves is my noghtmare... I can't point straight to something that I can't see, so why should my boy go straight...