Scent Discrimination Exercise - How Do You Teach It?

[Staranais]

I think you Aussies do this exercise too? Basically the dog is sent out to a pile of cloths & she must select and retrieve the one with the owner's scent on it. I haven't taught this before, but decided to give it a go this week for fun (the dog is on heat so we're pretty much under house arrest). We started off well, but have hit a few issues!

Over the last few days we have shaped a nice retrieve of a washcloth, which I'm really quite happy with.

Tonight, I thought I'd introduce one decoy cloth. I figured that since she's been retrieving the same wash cloth for the entire past week, if I placed a different-looking decoy cloth a short distance away, she'd undoubtedly preferentially retrieve the right cloth & then I could slowly make the decoy cloths closer/more similar.

Was a good theory but have had no success with it - I've just tried it 6 or 7 times, every time she's preferentially retrieved the novel cloth first. Even when it was quite different (a bath towel!) and several meters away she wanted to retrieve the novel cloth. Very strange.

How do you guys teach this exercise? What am I doing wrong? Do you have any tips or tricks? The only book I have that describes a method to teach this is "PlayTraining your Dog", which describes using a tie down board that I'm way too lazy to build.

[ness]

Dog Scout method is good as well Staranais.

[Ptolomy]

Yep I use the dog scout method as well for teaching scent, but our scent exercise in UD is using woods, metal and leather articles.

http://dogscouts.org/Dog_Activ-_Scent_Discrim.html#Scent_Articles

Teaching the dog to take scent from a wash cloth and bring back the one that smells the same was a lot more difficult to teach as the dog had no idea what we were trying to do when we shoved a wash cloth in its face to smell.

[PAX]

Yep I use the dog scout method as well for teaching scent, but our scent exercise in UD is using woods, metal and leather articles.

http://dogscouts.org...#Scent_Articles

Teaching the dog to take scent from a wash cloth and bring back the one that smells the same was a lot more difficult to teach as the dog had no idea what we were trying to do when we shoved a wash cloth in its face to smell.

I have taught a retrieve of the cloth, will wait for Kamal to teach me how to train discrimination of the scent on a cloth.....I don't want to stuff it up.

[bedazzledx2]

I find that teaching 'find the one that smells like me' is much easier than judges scent with decoys. I use a different article to start with rather than potentially 'poisoning' the articles used in a trial. For example you can use clothes pegs or sox or bits of PVC...doesn't really matter as you are teaching a concept.

Have the dog retrieve your article around the house and around the yard. Maybe let the dog watch you throw it into a patch of long grass...he has to use his nose to find it. Once he gets the idea of hide and seek (using his nose) I would then start using a decoy as in the dog scouts method but not before he knows to go find your scent. Then I would start to use different articles so that he isn't just getting one particular article.

[ness]

I will say I was lucky with my youngster - I tend to agree with bedazzledx2 its not an overly hard concept to teach the dog to find the article that smells like you. I already knew from when we played at the park that I could toss a stick and without fail Kenz would only return with the stick I tossed. If she couldn't find it immediately then she would keep hunting until she found the one I threw.

Sue Hogben suggested teaching it by getting a whole collection of assorted items all that the dog could readily retrieve and then use long grass. Each time you asked for a retrieve you varied the item. Therefore the dog was effectively learning to find the article that you scented not a particular type of article.

I had no issues when we went to using normal trial articles of any time. She has hardly made a mistake and was working a full pile in not very many nights.

We haven't tried cloths or UDX scent matching yet - might be something to start on when she is back to being able to train.

[Staranais]

Thanks Ness & Ptolomy, I like that DogScouts link - it's very similar to what we're doing, with the addition of initially throwing the scented cloth as another clue that it's the "right" one, which I hadn't thought of.

Lots of the other ideas are interesting too.

I won't have to do scent matching unless I ever make it into the top obedience class over here, which is rather unlikely since it's very competitive. I don't envy you guys if you need to do it in the lower classes, it sounds like a very hard concept to teach!

Edited May 27, 2011 by Staranais

[Staranais]

After two sessions we're at the point where she's consistently happy picking the "right" cloth out of two cloths when I send her to retrieve. She's definitely doing it visually at this point, but I'm happy she's got the basic concept that one cloth in the pile is right and one is not.

[ness]

Staranais I know it wasn't until i had at least 3 or 4 articles out that Ness started to actually use her nose. It was Ptolomy's suggestion to me at the time to just keep adding articles fairly rapidly and at some stage she would start using her nose and rely less on the visual. Before that I was either tossing or going out and placing the article.

[Ptolomy]

After two sessions we're at the point where she's consistently happy picking the "right" cloth out of two cloths when I send her to retrieve. She's definitely doing it visually at this point, but I'm happy she's got the basic concept that one cloth in the pile is right and one is not.

Staranais Ness is correct - at some points around article 3 or 4 the dog all of a sudden starts using its nose. Some dogs start snatching and grabbing - so we tend to add unopened cans of food to the pile so that the dog has to slow down and start to think, but you will know if this is the track you have to go down.

Keep up the good work and don't stay at the same level too long.

[corvus]

This is probably off topic, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever taught a dog to smell something on cue and whether it's at all useful. I've been teaching both dogs to take a breath on cue lately, and because they both tend to sit around with their mouths shut, I was marking and treating flared nostrils. I have a sneaking suspicion I've taught Kivi to air scent on cue. That's kinda cool. Could it ever be useful for something other than taking a breath?

[Staranais]

Staranais Ness is correct - at some points around article 3 or 4 the dog all of a sudden starts using its nose. Some dogs start snatching and grabbing - so we tend to add unopened cans of food to the pile so that the dog has to slow down and start to think, but you will know if this is the track you have to go down.

Keep up the good work and don't stay at the same level too long.

Can you explain this please, Ptolomy? By snatching & grabbing, do you mean picking up and putting down cloths that aren't the right cloth before making a final selection? She is doing that a little bit sometimes, but I'm hoping that behaviour will fade as she gains more understanding of the exercise.

And, why do you add the unopened food containers? What do they do?

Edited May 29, 2011 by Staranais

[ness]

Yep that is what she means by snatch and grab Staranais. Runs out grabs the first one they come to and then puts it down again. Ness was bad for doing that. The unopened food containers are so that they start using there nose and getting use to there being other things out in the pile but they aren't able to grab and bring back. You can hide the article behind the containers so they are having to search for it as well.

[huski]

I think Ptolomy is referring to when dogs will see the pile of articles and will go out and grab the first one they see and bring it back. I think the purpose of the cans is that it forces the dog to work around them and they can't get in and grab an article as quickly.

I used the dog scout method too, I found it really great and Daiz was working on full articles within 2-3 days. However I do have a scent hound so you'd hope she would pick it up quickly

[RubyStar]

It was a real bitch teaching Ruby scent discrimination!! Took us ages, and it wasn't until Ptolomy suggested cans out in the pile did Ruby "click"!

Millie was taught in one session I started by placing a single scented article under a magazine and asked her to find it (she saw me place it there). She would naturally sniff to get it from under the magazine (she's a real loud sniffer!) Then I progressed to another article (obviously unscented) under another magazine, along with the scented one under a different magazine. As she was already sniffing them, she understood the difference pretty quickly. The same tactic didn't work for Ruby, little miss

[Staranais]

3 items today (2 decoy, one target) and by the end of the session she was starting to use her nose! Thanks guys.

[Ptolomy]

Goodonya

[Yesmaam]

I think you Aussies do this exercise too? Basically the dog is sent out to a pile of cloths & she must select and retrieve the one with the owner's scent on it. I haven't taught this before, but decided to give it a go this week for fun (the dog is on heat so we're pretty much under house arrest). We started off well, but have hit a few issues!

Over the last few days we have shaped a nice retrieve of a washcloth, which I'm really quite happy with.

Tonight, I thought I'd introduce one decoy cloth. I figured that since she's been retrieving the same wash cloth for the entire past week, if I placed a different-looking decoy cloth a short distance away, she'd undoubtedly preferentially retrieve the right cloth & then I could slowly make the decoy cloths closer/more similar.

Was a good theory but have had no success with it - I've just tried it 6 or 7 times, every time she's preferentially retrieved the novel cloth first. Even when it was quite different (a bath towel!) and several meters away she wanted to retrieve the novel cloth. Very strange.

How do you guys teach this exercise? What am I doing wrong? Do you have any tips or tricks? The only book I have that describes a method to teach this is "PlayTraining your Dog", which describes using a tie down board that I'm way too lazy to build.

I never really understood the purpose of the scent discrimination test in OB clubs.......... What does it prove????

Edited June 1, 2011 by Yesmaam