Today's Sunshine

There hasn't really been anything specific to point out as sunny today, so let's talk about a fun little pastime we've come up with instead. As a simple nose work exercise, I'll hide an item somewhere in the house and have Monster search for it. Not particularly advanced, but I've been trying to develop it a bit and have found something which is proving much more of a challenge for Monster.

Weeeeell... That makes it sound like it's hard, I can't agree with that. I'm far too good.

So, this is what we do: First, I take out a special treat (usually a half thawed chicken wing, which Monster for some reason really enjoys) and place it in Monster's food bowl with him watching. But instead of giving him the all clear to eat I give him a command to stay. I take out some item (anything really - usually a small item of clothing like a sock, or a coaster, or a key, or my wallet, or one of Monster toys) and show it to him, letting him sniff it briefly. Then I go upstairs and walk around a bit and hide the item somewhere a bit tricky (behind the books on a shelf, under a pillow, under a rug, on a window shelf behind the curtains, and so on - anywhere he'll have to make a bit of an effort), making sure I've touched and lifted lots of other things along the way too (otherwise he'll just track me instead of doing a search for the hidden item). I then go downstairs again and send Monster off to search...

Finally!

This maybe doesn't sound like it's all that difficult, but for Monster it's not so easy. First he has to hold a stay close to the temptation in his food bowl - with me elsewhere so he needs to control himself rather than letting me control him - for several minutes (it's not a big house but I make sure it takes a bit of time to hide the item). He then has to leave the treat in order to get it, and focus on finding the hidden item without getting distracted by the temptation. He then needs to not only find it and race off to his food bowl, but instead pick it up and bring it to me... I don't know about your dogs, but Monster struggles a bit with this. The first three-four tries I had to help him leave the food bowl at all, and follow him upstairs to get him started at all. And even when he'd started searching he'd abandon the search and come back down to look at the treat again, repeatedly. He has pretty good search stamina ordinarily, but found the treat very distracting. And once he did manage to find the item, it was really hard for him not to race off and reward himself rather than finish it and bring the item to me. In other words: lots of fun!

Fun for whom?

Oh, Monster likes a challenge too, don't worry. And as I said, this is surprisingly challenging for him. My only worry now is that it keeps getting easier for him. Soon it'll probably be boring... If anyone has some tips on ways to add variety and difficulty, we'd be happy to hear about it!