In training Wednesday night I decided to push his abilities and tried something new. The scenario was situated in a large parking lot and the winds were 5-10 mph. I had the decoy walk the track across the parking lot, then make a left turn. On the left leg he walked about 40 yards then back tracked on the left leg and continued to the right of the root track...in essence the track ended up being a "T" pattern. Given the conditions I aged the track only 5 minutes or so.
I bring my boy up to the start of the track and once he has acquired it we move forward. We cross the parking lot and when we get to the top of the T, he goes left. Now, I'm expecting him to go to the end of the left leg and go WTF? before he figures it out. Well, he only goes maybe 20 feet before he realizes he's going in the wrong direction. He turns 180 deg and follows the track to ultimately find the decoy. Christmas! My friend (decoy) was flabbergasted, but not more than me even though I already have confidence in him.
Here's the amazing thing. Just when I begin to believe how good a dogs' nose is I witness something like this. The dog was able to differentiate Ascending odor from Decending odor on hard surface wherein the back track (track on top of track) was less than a minute old! Incredible! And, he figured it out FAST. So now I have to do a few more, then come up with some other ways to try and trick him.
I bring my boy up to the start of the track and once he has acquired it we move forward. We cross the parking lot and when we get to the top of the T, he goes left. Now, I'm expecting him to go to the end of the left leg and go WTF? before he figures it out. Well, he only goes maybe 20 feet before he realizes he's going in the wrong direction. He turns 180 deg and follows the track to ultimately find the decoy. Christmas! My friend (decoy) was flabbergasted, but not more than me even though I already have confidence in him.
Here's the amazing thing. Just when I begin to believe how good a dogs' nose is I witness something like this. The dog was able to differentiate Ascending odor from Decending odor on hard surface wherein the back track (track on top of track) was less than a minute old! Incredible! And, he figured it out FAST. So now I have to do a few more, then come up with some other ways to try and trick him.