Jazz and I continued our training with Lynne all winter. We were training now for the highest level of AKC obedience, Utility. The exercises were complex and required the dog to respond to silent hand signals; determine which of several articles was scented by the handler; follow direction to retrieve one of three different gloves; stand quietly for a judge to examine them; run away from the handler to the far side of the ring, and jump back as directed by the handler.
During one lesson, Lynne announced, “Let’s introduce the scent articles. Jazz, this is going to be so much fun. You’re going to be great at this with that super nose you have. Did you bring your new articles, Sara?”
“Whoa. Hold on, Lynne. I subscribe to Front and Finish magazine now. In last month’s issue, there was a long article about training scent articles. It appears training scent discrimination is very complicated and I don’t have all the equipment yet. The article recommended something like the tie-down method. You need something like cable ties to tie the unscented articles down to the mat so the dog can’t pick them up. I guess the idea is that you let the dog yank the wrong articles trying to pick them up. Eventually, they will connect the correct, scented article to be the only article that they are capable of retrieving. As I say it, it sounds really involved. How many times does the dog try to pick up a tied-down article before they give up and find the correct one, or give up all together and come back empty-handed?”
“I used the tie-down method with Brook, and it worked well for him. He was an impetuous retriever and tying down the wrong articles slowed him down and made him think about what he was doing. But I’ve seen Jazz track in the fields and I promise you this is going to be a blast and you’ll never need to tie down an article. She’s a bull in a china shop most of the time, but with that nose, she’s Rudolph saving Christmas. Let’s get started. Where are the articles? Sara, set Jazz up in heel position facing me.”
When Jazz was in position, Lynne knelt down ten feet away, and shook the article bag, rattling the articles. Jazz perked her ears and sat a little taller, Hey, what’s in there? A new bag of toys for me? Lynne took two metal articles out of the bag and placed them three feet apart on the floor. They looked similar to the dumbbell that Jazz retrieved in the Open class. “Here, Sara, pick a leather one and rub your hand back and forth on the bar. Be careful not to scent the outside of the bells as that could spread the scent to other articles.”
After I had heavily scented the article, Lynne reached for it with her fingertips so as not to add her scent to the article, “Okay, Jazz, this is your article. Watch where I put it. We’ll let you cheat the first few times.” Lynne placed the article between two unscented, metal ones. “Sara, send Jazz with your tracking command.”
“Find it, Jazz. Find it.” She looked at me with a quizzical expression, Duh, it’s ten feet away. What’s there to get? It’s right there.
“Go on. Find mine. Go on.” I changed the wording slightly so she wouldn’t think this was entirely about tracking. She trotted toward the articles. She lowered her head, sniffing one of the metal ones. I inhaled, ready to give a verbal reminder of what she was to look for. Lynne raised her finger to her lips, shushing me. Jazz swung her head from the metal article to the leather one, and instantly picked it up. Lynne celebrated right away, and I joined in, “Good girl. Good girl.” Jazz brought the article back to me. I took it from her, and we partied with string cheese. “Oh cool, Lynne. That was fun.”
“It sure was. Utility is very complicated to train, and the dog has to make lots of decisions independently from the handler. It’s complicated, but I think it is the most fun. You can see the light bulbs go off as the dogs start to understand what we want. Now, we’ll do the reverse. Pick a metal article to scent, and we will put that with two blank, leather ones.”
Lynne placed the scented article down. She gave me a nod, and I sent Jazz to the pile with the new command, Find mine. She responded right away, and went to the pile. She nosed both leather articles, and then sniffed the metal one. She picked it up immediately, and walked back to me. On the way to me, I noticed she lifted her mouth up. The article fell between her back teeth and she gnashed it noisily. We praised her like mad. She traded the article for more cheese.
Again and again, in that one lesson, we sent Jazz to the article pile. Each time we made it harder. We added two articles at a time. We increased the distance she had to travel to the pile. We added the pivot to the pile so she no longer had the advantage of watching Lynne place the scented article. With each challenge her confidence grew. She started galloping to the pile, and cantering back to me as the distance grew. She never tasted an incorrect article.
“Two more times, Jazz and that is it. I’m not trying to stump you because I don’t think anyone could. Sara, start with the leather and stand a couple of feet farther back. No peeking for you either.” Lynne took the article from me and I smiled down at Jazz. She was grunting with excitement which I thought was absolutely adorable.
“Send your dog,” Lynne instructed from the other side of the article pile.
“Find mine.” I pivoted to the right, doing a 180 turn in place. Jazz spun with me. Lynne had placed the articles in a long horizontal line about ten inches from each other. I had been scenting the articles with the number 3 embossed on them. I saw Lynne had
placed it at the end of the line from where Jazz had started to scent the articles one at a time. Nose down, nope, not that one, sidestep, nose down, nope, not that one. Down the line she went to the article before the #3. She started to scent it and stopped as she pivoted to the #3, picked it up, and turned to me. “Wahoo. That was amazing. Did you see that? Good, good girl.” I took the article she was gnashing and rubbed her shoulder while I reached for more treats.
“It sure was. Okay, last time, use the metal.” Lynne placed the articles in a vertical line which stretched almost ten feet from end to end. The way the articles were placed, I had no vantage point to see if she was getting the correct one, but it never occurred to me she might pick one that was wrong. This time, Lynne placed the correct article first in the pile. This location would test Jazz’s confidence to pick up the correct article without having to check all the other articles first. Sure enough, Jazz picked up the metal #3, and trotted back to me. I took the article from her, and sat down on the floor. I ripped the plastic from the string cheese, and bit off pieces that she gobbled up. “Lynne, I can’t believe that this is my little dog. Does it always go like that?”
“Frankly, no. It never goes like that. Ever. I had an inkling that it might go well with Jazz because of her tracking ability. But no, I don’t know any dog that learns scent articles in half an hour. Not like that. I kept waiting for her to tell us that enough was enough and we needed to back up and stay at a certain level, but she never said no. Lucky for me, you’ve never seen a normal dog learn scent articles. Brook took three months to train and Joy has been training articles since September and she still makes mistakes. If you knew how hard it was, you might have stopped our progress half way through. It was like Jazz came out of the womb knowing scent articles,” Lynne chuckled, “She certainly doesn’t need a tie-down mat from Home Depot.”
The night she learned scent articles, Jazz hopped on the bed. Instead of heading to the foot of the bed with Bacon, she curled up at the top of the boyfriend side. I didn’t want to scare her off by hugging her close, so I gently placed my hand on her neck and breathed in her doggie, musty, haven’t-had-a-bath-all-winter smell. “You are truly amazing, Jazzie Girl, truly amazing. You could find anything, anywhere with that nose of yours.”
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