The Spaniel Annals

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Journey the Irish Water Spaniel, is happily back with us for additional obedience training.  I’m stunned to report that she has learned her scent discrimination articles in slightly over one month.  Journey arrived here in early December; she’s now at the stage where she is selecting the article I’ve scented without any additional aids.  (Earlier posts on “scent work” can show you earlier training stages of this exercise, as well as the finished exercise in the ring.) In the video that follows, you will see that Journey has all the basics down.  We’re not yet at the correct number of articles she has to choose from in the ring (4 metal and 4 leather articles), and I do give her some encouragement once she’s indicated the right metal article.  We also need to add in the “flying send” portion of the exercise.    But Journey has mastered the hard part, which is choosing my scent out of a pile of similarly shaped objects:

To give you some perspective on how quickly she’s learned this exercise, my three previous UD-titled dogs (springers and a Gordon setter) took over 6 months of intensive work to learn this, and some preparatory puppy play-training with the articles before that.  Reardon is slightly ahead of Journey on this exercise and has been working intensively on them since the summer, although he’s been exposed to this exercise for much longer.  Journey’s progress on this difficult exercise is truly astounding. 

However, not all training is this easy.  Here’s a video taken today as well, showing Journey’s difficulties with learning directed jumping.  This is a portion of a more complex utility exercise, where the dog is sent from the handler’s side to the opposite end of the ring, and then directed to one jump or another.  As you’ll see, after one month of working on this exercise, Journey is having a tough time getting the idea.  Finally we take a step backwards, and I put back in the gate that stops Journey from running right to me.  Whenever a dog is having trouble, there’s no shame in stepping backwards to where she’ll be successful.  We’ll use the gates for a few weeks, and then see if she’s getting the idea.

My instructor tells me that the Irish Water Spaniels she’s helped train have all had trouble with this exercise.  As retrievers, it’s so hard-wired in them to come directly back to the handler.  Plus Journey has had 6-9 months of retriever training, where she’s been trained to return directly.  No wonder this exercise is tough for her!   We’ll just keep plugging away until she gets it.   Note that at this stage of learning, I’m really not correcting her for making mistakes.  I’m just not responding.   If I corrected her at this point when she doesn’t understand the exercise, I have no way of bridging the “wrong” answer to the “right” answer, and the last thing I want to do is discourage her attitude.  I could dig a real hole for us if I got frustrated or negative.  Instead, Journey’s tail keeps wagging through the entire rather methodical exercise. 

When I watch this, I can see how slowly I’m moving.  How boring–but it was just so darn cold!  Next time I’ll have to be a little more fun.  On the other hand, I can’t be too fun, since Journey needs to keep thinking through this.  It’s always a balance between having fun and maintaining mental intensity.