Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: SamanthaTopper ]
#377113 - 05/01/2013 09:19 AM |
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Never let the dog go back and pick up missed pieces of food. Never allow the dog to go back, period. Remember, it's tracking, not food finding. Your dog missing pieces of food means he/she is following scent, not food. You want this. If you focused on your dog finding all the food, you'll never be able to remove it. And in trial (IPO/AKC/whatever), you won't have food and you will lose seriously major points (or fail, most likely) if your dog starts tracking in the wrong direction (which will happen). Remember that the dog is not just following the scent, it's following the scent in the direction the track layer walked. I truly believe that the dogs can differentiate this. And once the track is done, the track is done. The dog is going to learn it can track any which way and possibly be rewarded for it. It doesn't really know that the session has ended like you do.
Also, I'll put my dogs up or in a down and go get the pieces they missed. Totally salvageable and I'll use them again
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: SamanthaTopper ]
#377116 - 05/01/2013 03:37 PM |
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"Your dog missing pieces of food means he/she is following scent, not food. You want this."
It's not what it meant when my dog missed more than a piece or two.
And I didn't want that. I wanted him to pay attention to the track.
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: Katie Finlay ]
#377121 - 05/01/2013 10:31 AM |
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Your dog missing pieces of food means he/she is following scent, not food. You want this. If you focused on your dog finding all the food, you'll never be able to remove it.
You're a full 90pts ahead of me in tracking Katie, but are you sure about this? This sounds like you would never need to bother baiting a track again. Missing a piece, ok, its not the end of the world, but a good thing? How about missing an article? Do you see that as different or something?
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: SamanthaTopper ]
#377124 - 05/01/2013 11:50 AM |
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When I first did FST and my dog left a significant amount of food, it was because he wasn't checking each footstep. He was moving too fast and not paying enough attention to the track.
JMHO.
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: steve strom ]
#377135 - 05/01/2013 02:25 PM |
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Your dog missing pieces of food means he/she is following scent, not food. You want this. If you focused on your dog finding all the food, you'll never be able to remove it.
You're a full 90pts ahead of me in tracking Katie, but are you sure about this? This sounds like you would never need to bother baiting a track again. Missing a piece, ok, its not the end of the world, but a good thing? How about missing an article? Do you see that as different or something?
I have observed all of the situations in this thread during Sadie's progression. I also read something that didn't make sense to me when I read it, but does now that I've seen it. The following is JMO, from my observations and reading, ONLY, JMHO...
The motivation to track is for the food, the reward. So, you wouldn't remove it when a dog is learning to track. Al Govednik told me to my face that he never removes the bait from his training tracks, even when the dog is FH2.
HOWEVER, the PRIMARY scent cannot be the food. By teaching FST the way that the vast majority of us have been trained to do, we are making the crushed grass the primary scent, and the food the secondary. This actually happens when we teach the scent pads, and why it is such an important step. This is what gives validity to Katie's statement, and why I think she must be training with some excellent trackers. The dog is following the scent of crushed grass, but his motivation is still to find the food.
With Sadie, initially she was tracking just for the food, and never missed. As I started lengthening my strides and tracks, she learned to track, and would occasionnally miss a piece. As she got better, she started sleddogging, and was missing lots of food. I knew she was following scent, but getting frustrated because she wasn't finding the rewards, which only made her go faster. I had to back up and get her committed to tracking, and this is when knowing Patterson's three-track method paid off (although I condensed into one long track).
Now that she is more educated, serious, and focused, and there is much less bait on the tracks, she misses very little, but does still miss a piece on occasion. I just pick it up and put it my baitbag.
Articles are a different story. She actually has a noticeable change in behavior, almost like detection, even if she fails to indicate. That's because they were trained off of the track and added later
All just my own observations and conclusions.
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: SamanthaTopper ]
#377136 - 05/01/2013 02:51 PM |
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The first time they return to a scent pad they're making the association with the crushed grass. When you get to a point where the bait is random on a track its obvious food isn't the primary scent.
My only question is how can it be a good thing for a dog to skip anything on a track, let alone what you said is motivating him?
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: SamanthaTopper ]
#377138 - 05/01/2013 03:49 PM |
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With my dog, it seems to be moving on to the next footstep, rather than stop and search for a piece of food. She'll sniff around, but if it has fallen beneath the grass and she can't find it, she'll resume tracking. She knows she won't be allowed to come to a complete stop to search for a single treat, and that there'll be more further up the track.
From what I've gleaned, tracking leads the dog to food. I don't let it become a search for food, and that was something else that Katie mentioned, as well.
ETA; what I'm trying to say is that it is more of a missed piece that has eluded her than a skipped piece. In the beginning, she was skipping, but she's better now. She sometimes is sure there's a piece there, but I make her move on and I pick it up.
Edited by Duane Hull (05/01/2013 03:49 PM)
Edit reason: eta
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: Duane Hull ]
#377140 - 05/01/2013 04:37 PM |
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With my dog, it seems to be moving on to the next footstep, rather than stop and search for a piece of food. She'll sniff around, but if it has fallen beneath the grass and she can't find it, she'll resume tracking. She knows she won't be allowed to come to a complete stop to search for a single treat, and that there'll be more further up the track.
I'm having a hard time seeing where this is good. If she isn't motivated enough to really hunt for what you're using to motivate her, how's that going to hold up?
From what I've gleaned, tracking leads the dog to food. I don't let it become a search for food, and that was something else that Katie mentioned, as well.
Huh?
ETA; what I'm trying to say is that it is more of a missed piece that has eluded her than a skipped piece. In the beginning, she was skipping, but she's better now. She sometimes is sure there's a piece there, but I make her move on and I pick it up
Uh,, ok. A missed piece is something that eluded her? And you can tell she just skipped that one? You make her move on from what you want her to track for without getting it?
Katie will know this Duane, but let me ask you something.Your at a point in training where you're only feeding your dogs meals on a track. You go out and lay your track with bait through out it. The dog is walking the track half heartedly, skipping bait. What do you do?
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: SamanthaTopper ]
#377141 - 05/01/2013 05:21 PM |
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I make her move on because tracking is not about searching for every single piece of food. As my mentor told me, "the dog goes down the track because it expects to find food. It doesn't measure it's success by whether or not it finds every piece that it thinks is there". She should be convinced that she'll find food farther along, and continue to track to the end (or I tell her to stop).
That is the reason I don't use jackpots on the track or at the end. I don't want the dog to think, as has already been pointed out, that finding food is the end of the task.
I don't know about the half-hearted tracking, as I have never encountered that scenario. The only dogs I've tracked with are always motivated to track, and they are not getting their meals on the track. If this is some kind of test and you're calling me out to see if I guess the right answer, I'll pass.
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Re: Question about leftover bait on a track
[Re: Duane Hull ]
#377143 - 05/01/2013 05:38 PM |
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Its not a test, its just interesting.
Al Govednik told me to my face that he never removes the bait from his training tracks, even when the dog is FH2.
Why would he bother if all you need is the anticipation? A dog is just going to keep repeating an obedience behavior like sniffing each footstep on anticipation alone?
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