Teaching A Seekback

[kallistar]

You are right RS They are all scented (LP and I have been chatting.....again )

Thanks TSD

Yup - no unscented - ALL are scented, and ALL are correct for him to bring back

Gives him the most chance of success

That is good

Just another question (and thought) have you ever done any in the dark? And did you still have the same problem?

I just am picking your brains now for a friend who has heaps of issues with their seekback too.

Did a S.B with decoy with Tux today, but stuffed him because my friend asked me a question as he was about to pick mine up and my answer to her was NO.. poor Tux thought that I was telling him NO and then stopped. We did one straight away and had no problems at all apart from the anticipation to send him for the article

[kallistar]

Ptolomy I have visions of your red kids doing that as well. I have visions of Kenz doing that if I tried that with her. Ness would pick up the first one if she found a second one stop at it and go WTF, probably drop them both and then stand there going hello mum what are you wanting .

LOL.. that is what happened with Tux when we started UDX.. and he'd try to bring both back to me too.

[kallistar]

removed due to double post

Edited July 9, 2010 by kallistar

[bedazzledx2]

I can see the value of this method particularly when UD was the highest class. Unfortunately UDX has the decoy component to the seekback and the dog really needs to understand that there is only one correct article and that is the scented one. Personally I would rather that exercise be dropped from UDX but I don't think it will so we have to train for it.

I wonder if your initial training was a bit too fast and he got a bit overwhelmed? When I start seekback I will do a tiny arc of heelwork, leave the dog in a wait and walk back to the beginning and show him the article. Drop it from shoulder height so he notices it...go back to him and send. Don't worry if he anticipates any part of it. I build that to the same amount of heelwork but to drop it quite obviously and send from a really short distance. Increase the distance and alternate between dropping it and leaving him and showing him. This is initially fairly close to the start peg so he associates that with the beginning of the seekback. Don't forget that when you face the other direction where you about turn and halt shows a different picture to your dog and many get confused and go out of the area. You have to build this just as carefully.

You are right RS They are all scented (LP and I have been chatting.....again )

Thanks TSD

Yup - no unscented - ALL are scented, and ALL are correct for him to bring back

Gives him the most chance of success

[luvsablue]

When I taught Beckie the seekback I used to do some of them in the dark, this really excites her and stimulates her to sniff.

I also practised them in long grass. All this was to get the sniffing intense rather than using her eyes to find it.

When she showed a lack of interest, (probably because I did too much practise, I used to leave her sitting at the post, and walk around teasing her and pretending to place it down. By the time I got back to her she was frantic, then would go like a rocket and sniff like a

vaccuum cleaner. She always found it when she was feeling keen. The only times (very rare) that she failed to find it was when she was

"turned off". I use the same sort of methods in UDX with the decoy.

Luvsablue

[leopuppy04]

You are right RS ;) They are all scented (LP and I have been chatting.....again )

Thanks TSD

Yup - no unscented - ALL are scented, and ALL are correct for him to bring back

Gives him the most chance of success

I have visions of my little red kids - running around the ring picking up the first seekback then finding the second one and picking that up and then finding the third and picking that up and getting to the 4th and not being able to fit any more in their mouths :D and then just standing there looking at me with that "help me mum" expression

Lucky for me - Leo just finds the first one, thinks "BINGO" and brings it straight back to me .

The gloves on the other hand are a different matter..... yet another reason why we do speak

Personally I think it's the delinquent trainer :p

That is good

Just another question (and thought) have you ever done any in the dark? And did you still have the same problem?

I just am picking your brains now for a friend who has heaps of issues with their seekback too.

Did a S.B with decoy with Tux today, but stuffed him because my friend asked me a question as he was about to pick mine up and my answer to her was NO.. poor Tux thought that I was telling him NO and then stopped. We did one straight away and had no problems at all apart from the anticipation to send him for the article

Gotta love Tux' enthusiasm! As for the dark, yes, I did plenty in the dark. Same problem. Short sequences he was fine, but he just seemed to 'distrust' his nose and not know how to continue looking for it

I can see the value of this method particularly when UD was the highest class. Unfortunately UDX has the decoy component to the seekback and the dog really needs to understand that there is only one correct article and that is the scented one. Personally I would rather that exercise be dropped from UDX but I don't think it will so we have to train for it.

I wonder if your initial training was a bit too fast and he got a bit overwhelmed? When I start seekback I will do a tiny arc of heelwork, leave the dog in a wait and walk back to the beginning and show him the article. Drop it from shoulder height so he notices it...go back to him and send. Don't worry if he anticipates any part of it. I build that to the same amount of heelwork but to drop it quite obviously and send from a really short distance. Increase the distance and alternate between dropping it and leaving him and showing him. This is initially fairly close to the start peg so he associates that with the beginning of the seekback. Don't forget that when you face the other direction where you about turn and halt shows a different picture to your dog and many get confused and go out of the area. You have to build this just as carefully.

I agree too. I think that this method could pose major issues for UDX, but personally, with Leo being my first dog, I'm happy enough that we have gotten to UD and realistically I would like to work towards his OC and perhaps forget about UDX . I'll have to go back to the drawing board and see how we would work on the seekback in UDX should we ever decide to do it... but seeing that OC may not ever happen, I'm not holding my breath

As for my initial trainning. I think it was plenty too fast. I was SO excited about teaching UD that I think I jumped the gun, also not really knowing how to teach it . End result is a very confused dog that required a lot of training to overcome the stupidity of his handler

[luvsablue]

Hi leopuppy04

Have you tried putting him on lead and walking the seekback pattern with him, then when he locates it rewarding, then doing it over again, this time sending him by himself?

You can sometimes give the dogs confidence this way

luvsablue

[superminty]

One thing I am curious about is why people don't seem to teach this exercise as a tracking exercise?

Is it because a lot of the time the dog figures it out as training goes on?

I have seen a fair few UD runs over the years and can't recall ever having seen what I would call a "neat" seekback. Mostly, the dogs seem to search randomly, and far outside of where the track was laid. I understand that scent moves, but it really does look like the dogs dont know how to follow a track.

Just curious, is all.

I have complete confidence that my dog, at this early stage of training for UD, will find her seekback no matter where it is (she's a determined sort) but it is time and energy wasting having her search near and far. I am experimentinng with teaching her to track on a long line to see whether I can tidy it up.

Just wondering whether anyone else had tried/used a tracking methodology?

[bedazzledx2]

I guess it depends on the conditions you find yourself trialling in week after week. We have wonderful grounds in WA with lovely short grass and we do at least 90% of our trials on this type of terrain. This means no matter how you train your dog to track, dogs, being dogs, will take the shortcut by finding it by sight when it is clearly visible. Experienced UD dogs in WA will generally look for it first and use their nose if they can't see the article. Problems also arise when you trial 2 or more dogs in UD as by the time you have trialled the first you will have walked all over the ring, laying scent everywhere so its never going to be a clean track for your next dog. We generally only have one ring for UD these days so contaminated ground can be an issue.

One thing I am curious about is why people don't seem to teach this exercise as a tracking exercise?

Is it because a lot of the time the dog figures it out as training goes on?

I have seen a fair few UD runs over the years and can't recall ever having seen what I would call a "neat" seekback. Mostly, the dogs seem to search randomly, and far outside of where the track was laid. I understand that scent moves, but it really does look like the dogs dont know how to follow a track.

Just curious, is all.

I have complete confidence that my dog, at this early stage of training for UD, will find her seekback no matter where it is (she's a determined sort) but it is time and energy wasting having her search near and far. I am experimentinng with teaching her to track on a long line to see whether I can tidy it up.

Just wondering whether anyone else had tried/used a tracking methodology?

[ness]

Ness usually finds the seekback quickly and often tracks it back from me. She usually takes a neat track and only very seldom has to work the entire ring in order to find it.

Here are a couple of hers on video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ness#p/u/5/bTdV16HrnCU

http://www.youtube.com/user/ness#p/u/65/3W4rHcpqCCQ <this one she didn't go on the first signal but you can see the tracking bit she goes straight back along the track>

Edited July 13, 2010 by ness

[The Spotted Devil]

superminty - can you describe how you would train using a tracking method please?

[Tiggy]

ness love the big smile on your face when she brings it back

[ness]

Tiggy the first link is the mock trial from the other weekend after we had 3 trials of presenting issues .

[superminty]

On nice grounds and when trialling multiple dogs, it makes sense to teach them to find on sight, and resort to scent if unsuccessful. Good point, hadn't thought of that.

In Vic, our trial grounds can be, well, inconsistent (thinking of Warringal and all its weeds!), so the article may not always be clearly visible.

In terms of the tracking method, I was really looking for someone who had successfully taught it this way so I could see whether my experiments were on the right track, so to speak. This is my first time training for UD (first dog, in fact) and my training brain got hold of that tracking idea and wouldn't let go. In light of the comments above, I can now see the merit in it only if the trial grounds are poor and only trialling one dog.

My idea was along the lines of an earlier poster - what I am doing is:

- laying a track (using flags to mark turns, only doing a triangle shaped track at the moment so that I end up back at the dog, who I have left at the start post with a long line attached)

- placing/dropping the article somewhere on that track (dog is in a drop facing away from the track so hopefully she doesn't see me drop it, I do a few "feint" placings as well just in case)

- once returned to dog, pick up line, about turn and send in direction of where I have just walked i.e. final leg of track, using the line to prevent her moving too far off the track.

I don’t guide her with the line, merely prevent her from going way outside where the track is i.e. more than a few metres either side, depending on conditions. At the turns, again I prevent her getting too far off the track with the line and verbally mark when she finds the track again.

I am finding this to be quite successful, considering I have also never trained a dog to track! She knows how to use her nose already to find the article, I just wanted to show her an easier way to find it in adverse conditions. I try to do this where the grass is long/uneven and I try to hide the seek back as well as possible i.e. on bare patches of ground so it doesn't stand out, behind weeds etc.

Most of my training is done alone so I don’t have helpers to place the article and if I heel her and try to drop the article, she almost always notices, and simply hares back to where I dropped it. I wanted to teach her that when in doubt, follow the track! She has had 8 years to practice finding things by searching randomly (I joke that her job is "Tennis ball search and rescue" coz no matter where we are, she always comes back with a ball) so I wanted to break that cycle.

It's a work in progress. Poor dog, she gets experimented on a lot.

[leopuppy04]

Superminty - I think you make a valid point. Certainly the method of using the start peg/ teaching a dog to track forward first are the two 'techniques' that appeal to me the most. If anything, I think this thread has really highlighted that I didn't stick to the foundations long enough for Leo. Without the motivation to 'find' the seekback, it's all too easy to have a 'fail' or get confused or just 'give up' when you can't find it nice and easy. So as per good training techniques, with Kinta I'm really going to spend LOTS of time on the foundations, because as with anything - good foundations means that the advanced stuff comes easy. Just like with heeling . So we are back to basics with her (not that we ventured far away from it) with hide and seek games, and maybe a spot of tracking games etc to really make sure she understands it's rewarding to use her nose.

Leo is still going well, although I have to say I think the place where I let him down the most was 'not enough' hide and seek games so therefore I don't actually believe he has the persistence in him to keep looking.... so he'll be going back to do that with Kinta too

A few questions for those who seem to have no troubles at all:

*Did any of you teach scent games/ tracking games as a pup before the more 'formal stuff'. Even if you didn't - would you with your next dog? If so - what type of games?! I'm possibly getting a 3rd dog at the end of the year, so I need to start thinking of these things too

For those that teach the 'start peg' method:

*Do you add turns straight away or do you do straight lines (maybe up to the length of 30 paces) straight away? How quickly do you progress and why did you choose to do turns/ straight lines first? Did you ever find that you reached a point early on where the dog *didn't* return to the start peg but rather just look at you - eg: Say I do a really long stretch and the dog runs out, then turns back without going the distance - gets confused etc etc.

Just trying to think ahead and avoid some issues that run through my head

thanks again for all of your collective ideas :laugh:

[Ptolomy]

Superminty - I think you make a valid point. Certainly the method of using the start peg/ teaching a dog to track forward first are the two 'techniques' that appeal to me the most. If anything, I think this thread has really highlighted that I didn't stick to the foundations long enough for Leo. Without the motivation to 'find' the seekback, it's all too easy to have a 'fail' or get confused or just 'give up' when you can't find it nice and easy. So as per good training techniques, with Kinta I'm really going to spend LOTS of time on the foundations, because as with anything - good foundations means that the advanced stuff comes easy. Just like with heeling . So we are back to basics with her (not that we ventured far away from it) with hide and seek games, and maybe a spot of tracking games etc to really make sure she understands it's rewarding to use her nose.

Leo is still going well, although I have to say I think the place where I let him down the most was 'not enough' hide and seek games so therefore I don't actually believe he has the persistence in him to keep looking.... so he'll be going back to do that with Kinta too

A few questions for those who seem to have no troubles at all:

*Did any of you teach scent games/ tracking games as a pup before the more 'formal stuff'. Even if you didn't - would you with your next dog? If so - what type of games?! I'm possibly getting a 3rd dog at the end of the year, so I need to start thinking of these things too

For those that teach the 'start peg' method:

*Do you add turns straight away or do you do straight lines (maybe up to the length of 30 paces) straight away? How quickly do you progress and why did you choose to do turns/ straight lines first? Did you ever find that you reached a point early on where the dog *didn't* return to the start peg but rather just look at you - eg: Say I do a really long stretch and the dog runs out, then turns back without going the distance - gets confused etc etc.

Just trying to think ahead and avoid some issues that run through my head

thanks again for all of your collective ideas

Seekback - from the beginning I use a start peg and I put turns in from the word go. I drop the seekback close to the start peg as i am increasing the distance. I don't worry about the formal stuff like finishes and waiting I tend to treat it as a game we about turn and I might grab the collar and rev them up and say find - so they are always eager to race off and find it. (the know the find it game at home when I hide things in different rooms).

[huski]

Bumping this up as I have decided to start training the seekback with Daisy. She loves doing scent games - you'd hope exercises where she uses her nose are ones that would come rather naturally for her, so I can't wait to see how she goes.

Scenting is a real default behaviour for her, before we got a white dumbell she was having trouble seeing the plain wood one sometimes and she'd put her nose right down and 'track' to find it instead :D

Does everyone start out training it using a proper SB article or has anyone started training it using another object?

[superminty]

Hey huski - I'm new at this too, but I started with a proper article coz my girl thinks anything and everything is a toy so I knew she'd be motivated to find it. I did play some rev up games with it first though.

[huski]

Thanks SM! I was curious cos I don't have a proper SD article as yet, so I was wondering if it's most advisable to start out with a proper one from the get go.

[leopuppy04]

Hey Huski - we are still plugging away at it but I'm pretty happy with how Leo is progressing and Kinta too although she hasn't started anything formal just yet.

for around the house and hide and seek I've used a seekback article. For in the park, we've been playing track forward games and I've been using an old sock that smells like me This was more for ME than for her, as it made me play the game in a much more informal manner

I think that because of all the difficulties I had with Leo, I carried around a fair bit of baggage with it and I wanted tobe pretty sure I wouldn't be worried about what Kinta was doing etc.

Once I start formally teaching Kinta the exercise I will use a seekback article etc.