I've been working on several areas this week, one of which is an additional skill aimed at teaching Bailey to "Find Jason". This is a very good skill for a child's DAD to have in case the situation ever arises where Jason wanders off when we're out and we can't find him. Although I can't ever imagine this happening, you never know!
The game involves Jason showing Bailey a treat and then, whilst I hold onto him, Jason teases him a bit by waving it in front of him and then running off to hide in one of the rooms in our home. Bailey watches Jason disappear around the corner and then I release him saying, "Find Jason''. Bailey searches each room until he finds him and then Jason rewards him as soon as he's found. We repeated the game a couple of times and as it was night time, we left the lights off in most of the rooms so I could see Bailey really using his nose to find him. They both loved this game. What better fun to be had than playing 'Hide & Seek' with your dog! Bailey picked up the game very quickly too.
I've also been busy playing some different scent maintenance games with Bailey whilst Jason is at school. The first of these involved a line up of four scent tubes with a hole in the top of each and all containing a cotton ball. Only one contained the low scent source sample taken from Jason's saliva. I place them about 12 inches apart and waited to see if he could locate the one containing the actual sample. He walked along the line up and sniffed at each before going back to the positive and picking it up and then dropping it again before coming over to where I was sitting and giving me the low alert signal.
Bailey was given a game to play during his DAD training called 'Find It'. This involved us hiding treats around the room and then asking him to find them. At first, we placed them on top of things like side tables, and then as he got the hang of it, we'd make it harder by hiding them under things, so that he would have to really use his nose and not his eyes. He really enjoyed playing this game and it taught him to be a really nosey dog!
The game involves Jason showing Bailey a treat and then, whilst I hold onto him, Jason teases him a bit by waving it in front of him and then running off to hide in one of the rooms in our home. Bailey watches Jason disappear around the corner and then I release him saying, "Find Jason''. Bailey searches each room until he finds him and then Jason rewards him as soon as he's found. We repeated the game a couple of times and as it was night time, we left the lights off in most of the rooms so I could see Bailey really using his nose to find him. They both loved this game. What better fun to be had than playing 'Hide & Seek' with your dog! Bailey picked up the game very quickly too.
I've also been busy playing some different scent maintenance games with Bailey whilst Jason is at school. The first of these involved a line up of four scent tubes with a hole in the top of each and all containing a cotton ball. Only one contained the low scent source sample taken from Jason's saliva. I place them about 12 inches apart and waited to see if he could locate the one containing the actual sample. He walked along the line up and sniffed at each before going back to the positive and picking it up and then dropping it again before coming over to where I was sitting and giving me the low alert signal.
Bailey was given a game to play during his DAD training called 'Find It'. This involved us hiding treats around the room and then asking him to find them. At first, we placed them on top of things like side tables, and then as he got the hang of it, we'd make it harder by hiding them under things, so that he would have to really use his nose and not his eyes. He really enjoyed playing this game and it taught him to be a really nosey dog!
The other scent game I played involved placing a box containing various items in it including a test tube containing the low scent source sample. I placed it down and waited to see what he would do. He sniffed all the items and you could see that he could smell the sample by the way he began to fossick through the box and move things around with his paw. He started to get quite excited and worked up and then turned to me and gave me the low alert signal.
I'm really happy with how interested he was in each of these games and that he gave me the low alert of his own accord for both games.
I'm really happy with how interested he was in each of these games and that he gave me the low alert of his own accord for both games.