Detective Trials

 

Last weekend Saffron and I had our second attempt at a detective trial;  it was a really great learning experience and I thought it might be of interest to some of my fellow competitors.  It's always helpful to see other trials/searches and get an idea what to expect.

For my friends who are not scentwork competitors, detective trials are the highest level of AKC scentwork.  In order to enter your dog must have earned at least one Master level title.  To earn the Scent Detective title (SWD) you must qualify at ten different trials.  Since the AKC scentwork program started in the fall of 2017 through Feb of 2021, only 20 teams have earned their SWD.  The first two were earned in July of 2019 at what I did not realize at the time was Robbie's last trial.  A detective test will encompass both indoor and outdoor areas, with 2000-5000 ft2 total to search;  there will be 5-10 hides with the number unknown to the handler, and there will be a time limit of between 7 and 15 minutes, depending on the area to cover and the number of hides.

Saffron and I had entered a two trial, one day detective event at the last minute back before Christmas when a relatively close one failed to fill.  I figured we would just give it a dry run and see how she did and what to expect.  To be honest, it didn't go well at all.  She was overfaced, there were a number of hides high on walls which she struggles with, the searches were relatively large areas with small entries so you did not have a lot of down time between the two runs to recover, which is hard for me.  In her first run she missed several hides and then PEED directly on the one exterior hide.  I was mortified- it figures my intact male would never be excused for eliminating but my darn spayed bitch would be the one!  That didn't exactly set us up to be in a good frame of mind for the second search and she again missed several hides and ran out of time. There were about 7-8 other dogs showing and no passes in either trial that day.

I knew we needed to polish up some skills and we have worked on them a little bit, but to be honest I haven't been too motivated lately and especially since she finished her masters overall title.  I was really looking forward to detective with Robbie and I think part of it is still missing him, but also Saffron is not as good a problem solver, has a lower frustration threshold, and didn't have the best foundation since she came to me when Robbie died and I got her ready to trial pretty quickly so I would have a dog to show.  I've done much less with her outside of class than I did with Cory and Robbie and it shows.

So I had planned to enter a weekend of detective trials next month and give it a go again, though I hadn't really made a good effort to prepare.  When the email came that there were openings in a local trial on a day I had free, I figured what the heck and entered that one too.  The day before I set up a detective-ish search at work using our pharmacy, front desk, two exam rooms, hallway and waiting room.  Saffron had a hard time with one elevated hide (surprise), did ok on the one deep in a file cabinet and one inside an exam room cabinet, had a bit of trouble with one on the bottom of a fire extinguisher (universally my shelties have struggled with this, I don't know why), and had one hide on a low windowsill I thought was pretty straightforward that she could NOT find.  I wasn't exactly encouraged by her performance.  However today I realized that the one she couldn't find was a new, empty slider with no swab in it that I had mistakenly thought had odor!  DUH!  

The trail was only about an hour drive in a location I was fairly familiar with.  As it turns out it was set up really well for us because we could park right outside the door and wait in the car and then walk right in, so no long trudges through the center to search areas (it was held at Roberts Center in Wilmington Ohio with the Clumber Spaniel National).  I was a bit encouraged on our walk through because it was a fairly small area (about 2500 ft2) and with only a 7 minute time limit, so presumably a lower number of hides and less time on my feet.  The judge was very pleasant and accommodating and my fellow exhibitors were really helpful in making sure I got a walk through since I hadn't been entered the day before, and that I didn't have to walk any further than necessary.  

The map of our search area is posted above, I added a little more detail than was on the original.  We had a large indoor room with a table and chairs in the middle and a few more chairs and "stuff" along the walls.  Saffron went in and immediately went into odor on the chairs around the table, she investigated along several chairs and under them, but never really committed IMO and then sort of lost interest.  I took her around the walls and to all the other objects;  she investigated the chairs on the other side of the table a little but more kind of like she was cataloging the ghosts of banquets past and their food odors than really in odor;  the only other place she showed any interest was under the chair just to the right of the door which she checked out but then came back out, looked at me, and offered a sit...which is not a trained alert for her and I KNOW almost always means it is a false alert (unless it's a really deep inaccessible hide, and even then, probably STILL not real) but boy it's hard not to call!  I hesitated and then told her let's check outside first.  I'm actually really proud that I did not talk myself into a false alert anywhere in that room, at that point we were through half of our time AND half of our area and we hadn't found a hide yet!  Talk about nerve wracking!  Saffron was visibly deflating a little bit too, she wanted to get PAID!  

The outdoor area was a small courtyard with building walls on three sides and a privacy fence along the back.  There were three large flowerbeds with gravel instead of mulch, a wicker bench and ottoman to the left, and a wrought iron bar height table/chairs in the middle.  As we went out the judge told us the flower bed to the left was not in play, but the retaining wall around it was.  This made me think we'd better darn well check out the wall closely and I'd better keep her out of the flower bed because it made me wonder if someone had peed there!  She found three hides pretty quickly;  I can't remember exactly the order but I think that she found them pretty much moving left to right (there was a light breeze blowing from left to right as well).  There was one on the wicker bench to the left; we checked and she dismissed the left hand corner and moved on to  one on the metal chair above her head by the table, and then one in the retaining wall in front.  I asked her to go down the sidewalk between the retaining wall and the building and check;  she did not go deep into the corner and I did not push her as far down as I should have.  We moved back towards the back of the area and I was trying to remember for sure if that flower bed on the back right was in play;  about the only thing in it was a tree and I was a little afraid (given her history) if other dogs had marked there she might decide to pee;  while I was debating whether to ask or push her onto the gravel she went into odor again standing on her hind legs now on this side of the table/chairs.  I had a brain fart moment where I couldn't remember exactly where the hide there had been, and was trying to decide if it was blowing odor from the original hide or a second converging hide.  What I knew we NEEDED to do was let her work it to its source, but we still had at least two hides to find and I knew we had to get back into the interior area because there was almost certainly one there, so I was feeling time pressure with I think about 2 minutes or less left.  I ended up calling it and got a no;  it was all blowing from the original hide on the chair.  There was one in the flowerbed behind us that I had started towards to cover just in the gravel, and another in the retaining wall around the corner and back by the building that we had missed when I did not ask her to go far enough back (it was anise, I suspect if it had been clove or birch she probably would have picked it up a little easier).  On the interior, the judge told us she came in and immediately put her nose almost on the hide, which was on the underside of the table and was cypress.  Cypress is not used until master level and higher, and Saffron has not had as much opportunity to build a reinforcement history for finding it, so her lack of commitment/lukewarm interest suddenly made sense.  After I started thinking about it, I realized I couldn't remember actually introducing her to cypress or using it in training myself, and my instructor only uses it occasionally.  I strongly suspect she may never have really been taught that "cypress pays" which is a BIG hole in my training.  Sometimes it's hard to remember what you've done with a specific dog when you've trained several!  So we will be going to cypress bootcamp before the next trial!  Now suddenly a few masters runs where she just didn't indicate odor at all or seemed tentative maybe start to make sense.  I can be sure that once Saffron realizes cypress= cookie she will NEVER forget! 

All in all I felt much more optimistic after this search.  Had she given me a little stronger alert on the cypress, I would have called it (I almost did to start with but hesitated just long enough that she moved on) and then I would have felt pretty confident that we had found what there was to find on the interior and not felt such a time crunch pressure outside;  I think odds are good I would have taken a little more time and made the right call on the table this time, and I think we would have covered the flowerbed and likely found that hide.  We might/probably would not have gotten back in the corner to pick up the anise hide she missed.  So while EVERY detective trial may not suite our weaknesses well, I think we may be successful in some and they certainly will be a learning experience.  You can be we will be working on building motivation for cypress this week! 

I believe there was only one qualifier on this search out of 8 dogs, which surprised me because there were some very experienced dogs there and I thought this was a very fair and doable search.  I thought the biggest challenge was NOT calling false alerts in the big interior space with only one hide, and making sure you covered the entire area thoroughly.  To my way of thinking more challenging for the handler than for the dogs.  It was well worth the price of admission for the learning experience- thank you to the Clumber Club, judge Dave Conroy and Buggy Barb the trial secretary!