ZEST Training in Nosework
 at Craftco Metalworks’ storage yard
 8-24-24

My friend, Denise, and I are training every weekend at our favorite place, the storage yard at Craftco Metalworks.  They are always moving completed work out and bringing in supplies, so the places to hide scents are everywhere.

Denise is going to retire in October and told her employers that she would no longer work weekends, so we are able to work every Saturday and Sunday. She brings her three dogs (2 Shelties and a Cockapoo who are all competing), and I bring three of mine.  Each day I bring an experienced competitor (Spirit, Mercy or Lovely), a younger dog with whom I’m competing (Hopeful or Justice) and one of the beginner dogs (Pascha, Zest, Zeal or Dakuya) who won’t start competing until next year.  These practices that we’re photographing are their introduction to real searching, so we don’t yet ask them to do the harder hides (either high or hard to get to).

The young ones also do not yet wear the tracking harness, which is itself a pre-command, as I only put it on just before the starting cones, or in a trial, when the dog ahead of us goes into the search area.  And I take it off as soon as we finish our search, so the dogs know when the serious work time has ended.  Instead, their cue is a box with a cocktail of all 5 scents, set by the car, so that they come out of the car and have a reminder what we’re going to do.  Pascha is about ready to graduate to the harness.  The other three will hopefully be ready to wear it before the Craftco training ends for the winter.

You will see photos of me helping Zest when she’s struggling – and rewarding her at times for a partial indication because she just can’t remember to do the required sit or down with everything else going on around her.  Beside the stimulation of a BIG new place, bunnies occasionally dart out under their noses, people walk their dogs past the training area and often several people go by, talking away.

Zest was really distracted on this day because the airport (next door) was having an air show and people were parking along the road and walking everywhere as they headed to the gate.  Zest also has trouble focusing at any time – she tends to bounce around excitedly and have difficulty kicking into nose mode.  She always craves petting, so I am using it along with treats for rewards.  It has been tough on all 4 of the pups whom I kept last year because they have to share all the extra attention that comes with forming them into working dogs, but Zest seems more needy than the other three.

We start training at 8 a.m. so that we finish before it becomes unbearably hot.  We usually finish about 11 a.m. We get lots of shadows in the photos of the earliest runs, and glare in the later runs, so some photos are much better quality than others. 

We set two separate searches so that each of us gets to run “blind” (not knowing where the hides are).  Each search contains all 5 UKC scents and 1 or 2 distractions (balls or treats).  You can often see some of the hides in the photos, when they’re in little silver tins or copper-colored “bullets” that reflect the light.

All the dogs do both searches.  I have organized the photos by dates, so you can see how the competition dogs handle a search area if you don’t quite understand what the “baby” search dogs are doing.  Denise sometimes gets a whole series of photos of a search, while other times she just gets one or two photos, but by looking at the photos of both the other dogs on that day you get a good sense of each search.

I work with the pups in the house several times during the week, working on indications.  Since I have no puppies, I set up a bunch of “clean” articles in the whelping room and put down two “hot” articles.  I put other “clean” articles in the back bedroom where I store dog food and supplies (great distractions!).  We practice our start routine (Are you ready?  FIND it!) at the door, and then I let the pup in to search.  After we do both rooms, we search another area of the house (office, bathroom/washer/drier area), or kitchen.  That’s a little more difficult because the other dogs are barking, wanting their turns, so we work a little bit on focus.  That should help them remember soon to do a real indication at Craftco.