Hi all, 2 somewhat different questions!

I've taught my Cavalier girl to retrieve a dumbbell, and would love to teach her scent. We've got as far as teaching her to pick up a scent cloth, but I don't know what the best way of teaching her WHICH cloth I want when I put down a blank decoy cloth as well. Of course it's hard to keep the decoys completely blank, but I'm trying! I've had loads of suggestions like taking her to the cloths and saying no or leave to the wrong ones, and going mad with joy if she sniffs the right one, but going mad with joy startles her and makes her drop the cloth (haven't tried saying no to the wrong ones yet). I've also had it suggested to put a fairly dull treat on the wrong cloths so she picks them up without picking the cloths up, then brings the right one back as it hasn't got a cloth. I've also had putting tiles out or putting saucers on the wrong ones suggested. I did ask last week at club if we could try some scent teaching but we didn't get to it until right at the end so I didn't have the chance to ask, and we only have one or two trainers who know anything about obedience at that level.

Regarding the tricks, we've got a couple of 2nds at companion shows with giving a paw, twirling round, walking on back legs and rolling over. I wanted to try and teach her to jump on my back when I kneel down, but even with my OH helping she only wanted to put her front legs up. Then I tried teaching her to play dead when I pretend to shoot her, but wasn't sure how to start - I tried pointing my fingers like a gun, saying 'bang' and motioning down like the normal down command, but of course she just drops into her 'head up alert lying down' position, I don't know how to get her to lie on her side or even just put her head on her paws. In a downstay she NEVER puts her head down even with a 2 minute stay, she always watches me. So basically I'm hoping for some tips on training either one of these two, or something else really cool to show off with! :-D

I taught my dog the relax command....which means laying onside with his head down on the floor. I used the clicker and did it in stages ....eventually he only got the C&T when he did it right. You could do that and instead of using the word relax ...use Bang instead.....

Many moves are easier to teach backwards for example when teaching the retrieve you start with teaching the dog to put the object in your hand which really is the last thing the dog does when doing the complete retrieve(well before it comes to your side) but the last thing with the object.
With "dying" the first thing to teach is teaching the rolling on her side when she is lying down.
When she knows to roll on her side you can process to her sitting and going down and rolling and finally from standing up.
I trained with a clicker clicker too.
I'm not sure if this would work with a quicker moving dog though :).
My dog knew roll over-command so I started with her lying down and motioning the roll over,clicking when she got to her side.
Pretty quickly she figured out it is being on her side I want and from this it was easy to process... she did a pretty good "dying", she would drop on her side and if I did not give her a treat she would quickly lift her head to check if I'm watching  and go back to being "dead" :)

Yes, I taught her retrieve by starting with hold, then picking up etc. Hmm, she does know 'down' and 'roll over', so using 'bang' and stopping her half way might work, thanks!

You need to be very careful when teaching scent.  It is very difficult to teach using your own cloths, you really need to to do it with someone else so you use their cloths and only your own as the correct one.

Personally I would not teach it straight on cloths.  To get her used to finding your own scent when out on a walk have a article (I find hair scrunchies good) and drop it in some long grass without her seeing it and send her back with a find command.  Keep the area small, don't send her too far or when you go into the ring she will try scenting too large an area.

Move on to someone putting out articles that are difficult to pick up and then putting out your scrunchie or similar that she is familiar with.  When she is 100% bringing back the right article, you use an article she is not familiar with, that will tell you if she is sighting or scenting if she brings that back.  Only when that is 100% I would move onto cloths.  When moving onto them I would introduce your cloth to articles then move onto tiled cloths with only yours untiled. 

I think you are confused with using treats on the cloths, they are only usually used to get the dog to actually put her head down and go over the cloths, ie you would not put your own cloth out there, just put the treats on the cloths and get her to go around them (usually in a circle) picking up the treats, when the last tread has been eaten, call her out and praise.

Don't rush scent, it is the hardest exercise to put right if they lose confidence.
Good luck.

She will pick her own dumbbell out of a cluster of toys / balls / dumbbells, though of course being a Cavalier it's a nice small one that's probably easier for her to pick out than anything else. She's already happy to sniff at the cloths so sounds like we don't need to do treats on cloths either. I think I'll go looking for tiles to put in the cloths - unless such a thing is available already made up??

The main reason for using a different article with your scent on it is if it all goes wrong or she loses confidence she will not relate this to the cloths used in the ring.  Get her 100% confident on different articles before moving onto cloths. 

When you have moved onto cloths, if she fails at anytime, forget the cloths for a while and go back to articles. This really is an exercise not worth rushing.

Well, she's fine picking up cloths that I drop while doing heelwork (I know you suggested other items but I don't really need her to be picking up everything lying around our house!). So I will have to try and persuade a friend to help with extra articles to pick the cloth from I guess.

She shouldn't be picking up anything that you don't ask her to.  It is only when you give whatever command you use in scent she should look for it and scent it out. 

She never has yet but she's so clever she might try it to see if it gets a reward! But anyway she's happy with cloths for now, hopefully they can give me more help tomorrow. Problem is hardly anyone at my club is into actually competing.

OK, me and my friend had fun in the garden with mugs on top of the 'wrong' cloths so she couldn't pick them up. It was funny watching her brain working - first she thought 'mum wants the further cloth', so we added a third one and she went for the furthest and then worked it out - 'mum wants the middle cloth' so we put it nearest her and she went right past it at first. We also graduated to small pebbles on the cloths instead of mugs, and added a 4th cloth, and we got 'mum wants the 2nd cloth' and then 'mum wants the 3rd cloth', very funny to watch. I also chucked the cloth into the long grass on our walk today and sent her back for it - ok as long as she could see a bit of it, but completely lost if she couldn't! So now my questions are 'how do I progress to teaching her 'mum wants the smelly cloth'', and 'where can I buy some proper scent cloths online?'

:-)

Have a look on Obedience UK shop, then you can e mail the people who make the scent cloths & tell them exactly what you need. BTW you can put tiles on the blank ones at first. I tell my "pupils"to have some thing smelly in their hands @ first  before they scent the cloth, this encourages the dog to pick up the right cloth.

BTW to keep the scent cloths"blank"use plastic/latex gloves to handle them & also tongs to put them out with. It's not so importent to keep the one you use with your scnet on blank. I would keep two separate set of cloths, ones you handle to be scented & the others to be blank ones. The ideal thing is to work with someone & use each other blanks cloths

> I also chucked the cloth into the long grass on our walk today and sent her back for it - ok as long as she could see a bit of it, but completely lost if she couldn't

I would say she is sighting rather then scenting. Do you give her your scent from your hand first and send her in the direction of the cloth with a 'find' command?  From your posts I don't think she is truly understanding the scent and you are trying to run before you can walk, that is not being rude by the way, but she needs her confidence and understanding built up before you go full speed into a full cloth scent.

I taught my dog to find an object by starting off with the object in plain view. When he touched the object with his nose I praised and rewarded by picking the object up and playing a short game with it (we started learning this with a tuggy rope). I gradually introduced the command "find it " each time he picked up the tuggy. We then progressed to him watching me put the tuggy rope a distance away from him but still in plain sight and sending him to find it. Then the rope, with him watching but in a sit/wait position, was put somewhere half concealed. Once he had mastered this I left him in one room and put the object in another room where it was obvious once he entered that room. We then moved on to him waiting in one room and the object concealed in another room.

He learnt this very, very quickly and was reliably finding any given object within 4 days. I only started doing this with a cloth fairly recently and started by showing him the cloth, letting him smell it and then hiding it whilst he was out of sight of it. At first I kept the cloth in my pocket all the time so it had a strong scent on it but now can use any cloth that I have just held for a short while.

I am hoping to do a proper tracking course this summer and would love to run a search and rescue dog. 

Yes, I do that, and I agree, she is sighting not scenting, but I'm not really sure how to teach her to smell for the cloth rather than looking for it. :-)

PS I must be being thick but I can't find anywhere to buy scent cloths on that link. Would they have any at the Newmarket show in June?

At risk of repeating myself <vbg>.  I would forget the cloths and teach her to scent.

Hide an article somewhere in a room in the house.  Keep it simple to start with and let it be on view, give her your hand to scent and the find command.  Gradually start making it a bit harder to find, if she fails, go back a step.  Make a big fuss of her when she finds it and she will see it as a great game.  Then try the garden, then a small area on a walk, don't leave her with a huge area to search, just a little one.  She will eventually start using her nose to find it and link that to the command and scent you are giving her.

Then start moving onto articles on the floor that she would find difficult to pick up and just put in her article that she likes, the other articles must not have your scent on them.  Then bring in another article with your scent on it that she does not know, when she finds that you will then know she is scenting and not sighting.

Scroll down the page, there are several ad's for scent cloths http://www.obedienceuk.com/shop/products.asp?id=2&cat=ForSale

What article should I use to put in the room? She only fetches her dumbbell or the scent cloths so far, so would it be ok to use the cloths to hide in the room? I shall go back and look at the link again, thanks!

You can use anything, a favourite toy, inside of a toilet roll..... just make sure you scent it well first. If she is not familiar with picking it up, use it as a retrieve article first.  The idea is to scent it out, so even if she finds it and doesn't pick it up it does not matter to much, as long as she marks it in someway it means she has used her nose to find it.  That is what you want at this stage, don't go too formal with her, just loads of praise when she finds it and she will think it is a game and enjoy it.

OK, I admit I stuck with the cloths but we've just had great fun finding it all over the lounge. It's such fun to see her brain working, like once I put it partly under a cushion on the floor, I had to help by pointing in the right direction but gave lots of praise as she was working. The next time she went straight to that cushion to check underneath - I'd put it somewhere totally different of course... :-) So she can find it even when it's out of sight now, though of course she is still just hunting until she spots it round the corner of the sofa, under the cushion, behind the tuggy etc. Of course everything in the house smells of me, so I might try putting it in different parts of the hall while I'm waiting for our class tonight. Then the garden sometime when it isn't pouring with rain!

Excellent, I bet she is really enjoying it.  Although the house smell of you, by scenting the cloth before you hide it she will get a 'hot' scent from it if that makes sense.

Yes that makes sense. Also finally got some assistance at club tonight, the putting a tiny treat on the 'wrong' cloths to teach her to sniff all cloths worked beautifully, I was very surprised. And she then did pick up the right cloth with no treat and bring it back, so my friend that was helping (she works novice and A so knows what she's doing!) was really impressed. Have booked myself on a training day in a couple of weeks too - if she doesn't come into season!! :-)

I  started doing scent with Henry and made it more of a game than anything. 

My main aim is to give him so much confidence to do it so he has no doubt in his mind that he is on the right cloth and also making it fun to run back with it to me and loads of rewards for doing so!  Rewards are very important. Esp to a labrador!!

When out on a walk, I will drop an article or cloth and ask him to find.  When he runs back to me with it he gets a reward.

He loves doing scent now.  We have done a few formal ones but for the moment its very important for me to make sure he is happy and having fun doing it.

I will work on formalities later on!

I think we're getting there! I did the exercise with tricks on 2 blank cloths again at home and she was fetching her own cloth, so I decided to be bold and try it without the treats, and she still fetched her own cloth. Then I wondered if she was sighting the difference between the 2 clean pale blue cloths and my own grubby white slightly smaller one, so I removed that, and just used 2 of the identical cloths, one blank with a treat and one I'd freshly scented, and she brought back the right one again! So I tried 2 identical cloths, one blank and one scented, but no treat - and she still brought back the right one!! Obviously if she'd failed any of these steps I would have taken a step back so we could finish with success at a lower level! I gave her a jackpot treat and we are leaving it at that for now, hopefully tonight or over the weekend I will try again and if she's still doing it, it looks hopeful that she's working out what I want isn't it!

well done Lucy.  She sure seems to have cracked it!

Keep her happy and you wont go far wrong :-)

Thanks! She's always happy though, being a Cavalier lol!! :-D