Oregon Earthdog Test - May 12,13

[bradl]

Lots of Cairns will be diggin' it in Turner Oregon on Mother's Day weekend. Details at OTEEC.

[bradl]

Weekend forecast looks deluxe for earthdogging in Oregon

[bradl]

Some random phone-snapshots from the weekend.

Edited May 14, 2012 by bradl
replaced youtube with flickr version

[bradl]

Oh, and the Robinsend Report: my little pocket assassin Stella charmed her way through three Master Qs.

Echo missed qualifying in Senior because she dorked around eating grass for most of the 90 seconds alloted to reach the quarry (Fail), and only THEN dashed down into the hole to work furiously (Pass) and recall brilliantly (Pass). Overall: Fail due to 15 seconds over-time. On Sunday Echo again repeated the Salad Bar experience above ground so as soon as the time elapsed I grabbed her so as not to reward lollygagging with a run at the rats. Fail.

Dundee showed a tiny bit of promise of waking up to awareness of rats during some practice exercise, but never bothered to enter the tunnel. He was much too busy being a boy and sniffing grass hummocks and marking everything in sight. Fail. We need to (one) send him back to the Intro class instead of wasting Junior entries, and (two) give him some above-ground tunnel practice with treats, to get him to enter the den as a matter of course. After that we can work on what to do when he discovers rats at the end.

Overall, it was a great weekend with fantastic weather and super enjoyable company. Although I always root for every dog to pass, including my own, it scarecely matters because the dogs and people are just enjoying being outdoors, together, doing something fun. Every dog's a winner, for sure.

[Hillscreek]

Brad that sure does look like a good time for all (well maybe not so much for the rats) and a fun thing to do.

[bradl]

After the test is over, and dinner is over, it's time to hang out.

Here's a short video of our Border Terrier friend Donna giving an impromptu introduction to Nose Work: http://www.flickr.co...N00/7197124572/

This is lots of fun for the dogs -- somewhat like being rewarded for simply *being* a dog, but as the exercises build it gets a lot more interesting. I like this short intro because illustrates universal principles of building associations, layering, transferring, and chaining behaviors.

Also, any sort of work tires dogs out and we all know a tired dog is a good dog!

[PeppersMom]

That was really interesting..I think this method could be used for utility scent discrimination too. Just wondering what the purpose of the birch scent is? Did she say birch?

[bradl]

Yep, birch. Two other scents used (later) are clove and I believe anise.

The reasoning is apparently that they are not typical scents a dog would encounter commonly in daily life. (Sort of like the "novel protein" foods used to address allergies -- it's nothing special about duck or venison or the scent or whatever, it's just the dog probably has not already developed a sensitivity to it since it's not ultra-common.)

After hiding the birch article for her dog a few times I had sudden urge for a root beer, though.

I think the purpose of the scent is gradually to use the scent as the reward marker, rather than finding treats directly. It's an analog to a clicker marking the moment a food reward has been earned in clicker training.

[tlwtheq]

Brad,

What is the CAT used for? B.t.w., thanks for confirming my suspicion that the one pup is

a Border Terrier.

Och! How can I not congratulate you for the success of your pack?

Edited May 19, 2012 by tlwtheq

[bradl]

Heh, that particular tractor isn't used for tests - as it happens Ben (our host) was in the process of plowing under all the fields that weekend and was waiting for us to finish the last test on Sunday so he could finish with the part we had been on.

What would have been more representative would be a pic of the backhoe which we do use to scratch out the den layouts. Ben is an artiste with that thing. Ah, found a snapshot from Den Placement Day...

[Greg P]

OTTEC tests at Belden Farm are always the highlight of the ED season. Kona and I had a great time (and success!)