Rewarding at Source

One of my goals is to get Rogue to respond on the source of the odor and stay there until he is rewarded. The first thing we tried was to have my trainer reward Rogue as I am walking away. This should have taught him not to pay attention to me but to stay at source until he gets his reward but it didn't work. Next I tried telling him "Stay" when he got to source and then I would try to make another presentation and keep moving. I think this started to work but the problem is that it is his job to tell me where the odor is and not my job to tell him. How can I tell him to stay when I don't know where the trainings are?

Today I started something new. I put a tug toy next to his reward. I made sure that I was standing on the other side of the room when he found the source of the odor. After he responded I walked to the source of the odor and pulled out his tug toy.

I know what you are thinking, Rogue is going to start sniffing for his tug toy and not the odor he should be sniffing for. I have about 6 different tug toys made out of 6 different materials. If I only use one or two a day then he shouldn't put the odor of his tug toy with the odor he should be sniffing for. But you are right, this is a fine line I'm walking and I will have to be careful. Anyway in the 30 seconds or so that it took me to walk across the room and pull out his tug toy he showed no signs of wanting to leave source. In fact he put his nose back on source 3 or 4 times. Since this was the first time that I have tried this I know that is not why he stayed at source. Maybe me telling him to "Stay" worked better than I thought. After we played for a little while and I let him win the tug-o-war game, he ran back to source, spit out his tug toy and responded again. This time I tossed his tennis ball, his real reward.

Here is what I need your help deciding. If I let him go back to source (after he gets his tug toy) and reward him again, this time with his tennis ball, is this going to help or hurt his training.

I think it might help because He might learn that he needs to be at source to get what he wants or he might hurt because nothing has changed. I still have his tennis ball so he should be next to me to get what he wants.

Rogue and I were too busy yesterday doing real world searches to do any training. But during one of these searches I did take the time to keep Rogue in an area that he had searched just to see if he would false respond out of frustration. It took about two minutes and he looked at me with a look that said "I'm confused and I want to sit" Rogue was told "No" and I put him back to work. He searched the same area for another 4 or 5 minutes with no sign of giving a false responses.

Basic Obedience

Rogue took the day off from doing any detection training and we worked on basic obedience and the obstacle course. He has so much fun on the obstacle course. I should say he has so much on most of the obstacles. He is not a fan of the teeter totter but he is getting better. The cat walk is in two sections with a gap between the sections of about 16 inches. He has gotten over his fear of the gap and will wait to jump over the gap until he is told. He has gotten much better at getting a running start to jump over the high. The high jump is only about three feet high. I think it is time to move it up to four feet. I can tell there is a difference in the way he jumps over the high jump and the way he jumps onto a desk. If he is jumping over something it looks like he is having fun flying but if he is jumping onto something it doesn't look like he is having any fun.

Rogue knows the down command and will do unless we are walking when I give it to him. He will slow down and he gets that look on his face like he thinks he is trouble but if I stop when I give the command he is fine with this. I am not a fan of using food as a reward but I think I'll use it for a day or two in this case. Just long enough for him to realize that going into the down position while I am walking away isn't a bad thing.

Slow day

We didn't do any real training today so I don't have anything to post about. Sorry.

Easy day

Today's training was easy. We didn't really work on anything we just wanted to make sure that the dogs got to find some of the training aids there haven't had in a while. I did notice that on two of the training aids Rogue had a good change and walked away but before I could say anything he went back to them and responded. He will still come with me if a give the smallest tug on the leash but this is an improvement.

Real world search

During a real world search yesterday Rogue and I were searching some buses. While inside the buses we didn't have any problems but outside was a different story. Rogue was so distracted by all the people that I had a hard time making him work. Guess what this means? We will be doing some training around large crowds.
Rogue did very good at yesterday's training, except for one of the stairwells. He missed the aid but so did every other dog. The aid (it was a small aid) was on a post on the bottom landing at about 4' high. The wind current in the stairwell was sucking the odor up. Once the dogs got their noses above the aid they all found it. I'm not going to worry about this miss because I think it was a bad plant. When we got up to the second floor Rogue did an awesome job finding the aid that was up there. Coming down the back stairwell I had to drop the leash or Rogue would have pulled me off my feet to get at the aid at the bottom of that stairwell.

Self confirm

Today's training didn't go so well. It was another self-confirm training problem. We had to search two buildings. Each building was about the size of two mobile homes put together. The first building was blank and Rogue showed no interest in that building. The next building did have a training aid in it but Rogue didn't find it the first time we searched it. My trainer told me to wait about five minutes and search the building again. Rogue didn't find it the second time we searched the building. I think Rogue was starting to get a little frustrated because he tried to respond as soon as we walked back into the building. He was showing interest on the pane of glass that was in the entry door. Now my trainer is good but even she can't hide a training aid on a pane of glass without me seeing it. On the third try my trainer went with us. This time Rogue had a small change in the corner of the break room and was showing high. I gave him a minute to work it our and the longer he stayed in that corner the stronger his change got. After a minute or two of searching the corner, a chair, and a table he stood on his back legs, sniffed the air and responded. The training aid was in the ceiling above the tiles of the drop ceiling. It was a large training aid but my trainer said that when we started the training problem it had only been sitting there for about 30 minutes. My guess is that the odor hadn't dropped down from the ceiling until we were searching the room for the third time. I wish Rogue had done better but the fact that he missed it doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that he was getting frustrated. I think I will have to start making him search a little longer between training aids and every now and then make him search a blank room two or three times just so he gets use to being in the same room for a while.