Just a brief training session today with my training partner, Pam. Juno
first watched Pam run into the bark box and close the door. I released
her, told her to search and she went out enthusiastically. I pulled her
back, after her reward from Pam and sent her again. Unfortunately, I
moved and that distracted her. She is more ADD than I am! Once her
attention strayed, we couldn't get her back on track. I finally pulled
her back and restarted her. good job the second time around.
We then worked Pam's #2 dog, TC. She seems to be having some issues
moving around on the wooden pallets. So, we did several problems with
her. I hid under the pallets and made her walk over them to find me. It
takes a lot of encouragement from the victim to make the dog
comfortable enough to come up and
I'm often asked how I train a search dog. I'm starting Juno, my 18 month old English Springer Spaniel to work as a live find FEMA disaster dog. There are less than 200 FEMA certified dogs in the system, so it is not a job that most dogs can accomplish.
Juno is not a perfect candidate. In fact, I've started her about 3 or 4 other times and washed her each time. She has a lot of problems, including extreme submissiveness and an over the top hunt drive. So, she will find a victim and then go off to find another - hunting is the thing she likes to do. She is supposed to stay and interact with the victim until I get there. The victim is supposed to be the best reward in the world. But, no one can create a game that is as good as
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