Scent Discrimination

[tigger000]

Hey everyone,

I've posted on here before about teaching my dog scent discrimination.

Anyway, im teaching him scent detection and am having one problem that im a little unsure of how to fix.

He is scent detecting tea. I have heaps of tea bags in a lunchbox and started teaching him a passive response (sit) when he smells the tea. The problem i am facing is...he is no longer just smelling the tea, he either tries to pick the lunch box up, grab the tea bags in his mouth, or stick his nose in the lunch box and nudge the tea bags around.

Im not sure why he is doing this or how to go about stopping it.

Is it that his reward isnt good enough? i've been using frankfurts and cheese and laternating between the two.

Or is it because i am also teaching him to put rubbish in a bin...so he now thinks that he will get a reward by picking the lunchbox/tea in his mouth?

Any ideas?

[Staranais]

Is it that his reward isnt good enough? i've been using frankfurts and cheese and laternating between the two.

Or is it because i am also teaching him to put rubbish in a bin...so he now thinks that he will get a reward by picking the lunchbox/tea in his mouth?

Any ideas?

Could be either reason.

I'd stop the putting rubbish in a bin, for now, if you can, or else make sure the props/cue/location you're using for both tricks are very different, in case he's getting them confused.

If his reward isn't good enough then I guess he might be amusing himself by playing with the boxes. His general attitude towards training (how engaged he is) should tell you if the reward is good enough.

It also sounds like he may not be entirely sure what exactly is earning the reward, so is experimenting with behaviours to see which gets rewarded - this is a good thing, by the way, far better than him responding to confusion by giving up. So to deal with that, make sure you do your best to mark the desired behaviour quickly & consistently so he's getting the most accurate feedback possible. You may also want to make it a step or two easier - go back to the last level he was successful at, and increase the difficulty slowly from there - only ever make it harder when he's getting 80% of the trials correctly first time.

Hope that helps.

[tigger000]

Thanks for your reply. I am using a cream colored bin, with a squashed bottle and the cue 'rubbish' for his rubbish bin skill, whereas for the scent I am using tea bags, blue lunch boxes and the cue 'find'. The only similar thing is that I am training both skills in our house as he is easily distracted outside.

Im having a lot of trouble getting him motivated and have heard that this is a problem with dalmations! So I tried not feeding him one morning and this seemed to peak his interest a bit more.

I think going back to step 1 and getting a good sit response to the tea is a good idea. And when he gives an unwanted response - scratching/biting I'll just ignore it.

Ugh I've been trying for weeks to get this and it's starting to do my head in! Lol. I think if he was highly toy motivated it would be an easier task, but I guess I can only work with what I have!

[Staranais]

Thanks for your reply. I am using a cream colored bin, with a squashed bottle and the cue 'rubbish' for his rubbish bin skill, whereas for the scent I am using tea bags, blue lunch boxes and the cue 'find'. The only similar thing is that I am training both skills in our house as he is easily distracted outside.

Some dogs cope better with simultaneously learning different tricks than others do. If your dog is getting confused, I'd only teach one at a time.

If you really have to teach both simultaneously for some reason, how about teaching both in different rooms.

Im having a lot of trouble getting him motivated and have heard that this is a problem with dalmations! So I tried not feeding him one morning and this seemed to peak his interest a bit more.

I think going back to step 1 and getting a good sit response to the tea is a good idea. And when he gives an unwanted response - scratching/biting I'll just ignore it.

Ugh I've been trying for weeks to get this and it's starting to do my head in! Lol. I think if he was highly toy motivated it would be an easier task, but I guess I can only work with what I have!

Highly food motivated would work well too, IMO - it's the fact that the dog is really motivated to earn something that matters, not what the dog is motivated to get.

Skipping breakfast can be a good idea, if you want to use food & your dog isn't very food motivated.

If he's scratching & biting, I'd wonder if you've increased your criteria too quickly, he sounds frustrated. I'd go back a few steps until you're getting 80% right responses to the cue first time & he looks happy and confident, then only increase your criteria for reward slowly from there.

I know when I teach scent work things, if my dog isn't 100% clear on what I want, we don't make it any harder until the confusion is cleared up.

Good luck!

[Dxenion]

Re detecting tea and sitting as a response:

Is the dog sitting on detection and then playing with the lunch box, or not sitting and playing straight away?

Are you using a clicker or word to mark the correct response (sitting)? Is he responding immediately to your mark? If not, this may mean he hasn't put two and two together that click = reward, or the reward isn't powerful enough. For example, if I asked you to walk across hot coals and gave you $20 at the end, the next time I asked you to walk across hot coals when your favourite singer is in the next room, I doubt you'd do it. However, if the first time I asked you to walk across hot coals and then gave you $1000, I bet the next time I asked you to do it and there was a desirable distraction nearby, you'd walk the coals. $1000 is too great a reward to ignore. What reward is too great for your dog to ignore?

If he is sitting and then playing, what do you do immediately after he sits (ie are you inadvertantly rewarding the play because there isn't enough time to get the mark in for the sit before he starts playing)?

If he doesn't sit and starts playing straight away, what do you do? Do you walk away, completely ignoring him or take the lunchbox back off him? The trick here is not to confuse the dog if there is a short window between indication and play. If you time it wrong, you may end up ignoring the indication and the dog may not know which behaviour gets no attention. Taking the lunchbox away is still attention.

Have you tried placing the tea bags in an object he can't pick up or play with (so that the dog is self-discouraged from play and is therefore not set up to fail)? You can then try again with progressively smaller objects until you end up back with the lunch box. The idea being that you have stopped the desire to play by making the object too big to play with, giving you a chance to mark and huge reward the sit. For the dog it is a much better reward than playing and being ignored by you.

Also, changing the object that the tea bags are in will break the association between a teabag scented lunchbox and playtime and return the focus to the game of 'what object is the tea bag in today'. Also, assuming he sits at the scent, after marking do you take him away from the lunchbox to reward him so that he doesn't get to play with or next to the target item? Also, have you concentrated on long sit training to reinforce that 'sit until I say to move' gets a reward?

We did the same thing when training our dog to find truffles, we started out with a no-fail basic setup and once he got the idea that find truffle + down = squeaky Wubba (favourite toy), we buried the truffle in different pots and different locations so that the dog could not anticipate where the truffle was, intensifying the desire to look for it in anticipation of the huge reward he got when he found it.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Edited January 30, 2011 by Dxenion