Part 5-Training sit and freeze as indication for scent detection dogs.

Описание: Day five of the "sit and stare" training we do the exercises in new contexts and add distractions from other persons. As before we try to add difficulties gradually but expect progress for every session. When facing problems we reset the dog, try again and give a quick reward. Then immediately try the difficulty again. Should that not work we go back one step (to the previous step, which did work) and then immediately try to have progress again. Neither dogs nor we live long enough to repeatedly practice what we already can do, when there are so many things we cannot do, yet!
Having come this far in the training the dog knows how it should indicate a find in a limited number of contexts and situations. The next steps in the training will include getting rid of the licking/"nosepushing", further generalization of the behavior to any context and most situations, searching or tracking before indicating, and finally adding target scent(s). The generalization of the behavior is never finished, there are always new contexts or situations to train. It doesn't matter if you think they are completely unlikely to occur in your job, the aim is for the dog to get the feeling that no matter what, indicating the scent is what pays off. In that way you and your dog will be more likely to handle unforeseen events.
If the indication starts to get sloppy later on in a dogs life, due to bad training, bad experiences or something else, the fastest way to have it working well again is many times to redo the exercises from day 1, starting with food rewards and/or the whole toy (Kong) and then work your way back to here.