The Spaniel Annals

In Scent Work Part 1, you saw two springers, Kani and Rozzie, at the opposite ends of their training in the scent discrimination exercise.   Reardon’s right in the middle stage.  He’s had literally months of developing confidence with cheese strips on the articles.  The cheese strips have been gradually faded to where they’re really just a dot of cheese.   All this time, the cheese has served two purposes: one, to provide Reardon with an instant reward for indicating the right article; and two, to associate my scent with something really good.  So the cheese really combines two powerful training techniques: operant and classical conditioning (more on that some other time). 

Now the big moment is here, where the cheese needs to disappear and Reardon needs to make independent choices about which article is the correct one.  It will now become possible for him to make mistakes (which he hates!) and he’ll have to recognize he gets a delayed reward for finding the right article.   That’s why he receives so many tasty treats when he comes back to me. 

Most trainers only post videos where everything goes perfectly.  But I think it’s more interesting to look at videos where things go wrong. In this first video, filmed last Friday, Reardon makes a mistake, knows it, and then displays various avoiding behaviors as the exercise becomes stressful:

I could make a crucial mistake here and try to correct Reardon when he avoids going to the pile of articles, using a collar pop or an ear pinch.  (My first competition obedience instructor, as talented as she was, instructed me to do this with Hank.  Scent discrimination was a stressful exercise for him for the rest of his life.)  I’ve learned, however, that in the learning phase of any exercise, to reduce the stress as much as possible on my end.  We need to have success!  Hence I help him while still trying to get him to make his own decisions. 

By the next video, filmed only two days later, Reardon makes that remarkable leap forward in his training:

He finds the right articles with minimal help from me, no cheese, and no avoidance!  What a guy!  Now we can move forward to gradually adding more articles in the pile and doing this exercise in different locations.  He’ll continue to make some mistakes, but we’ll work through them using the same techniques you saw in the first video.  Reardon is over the training hump.  This is always an exciting moment to experience!