I have not been rewarding my dog with a drug scented toy after a find. Am I doing wrong by not doing this? She is doing great, I was just wondering if it would improve her work any.
David C.Frost Webboard User Reg: 01-23-2002
Posts: 1204
Loc: Nashville, TN
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I've never used a scented toy during detector dog training. I've been training detector dogs since '68. I know a lot of people use them, but I never have. My reasoning is, I want the dog to concentrate on the search and the odor, not the reward. I know lots of good trainers that do use scented toys, and they seem to do fine. It's just not my preference.
DFrost
Any behavior that is reinforced is more likely to occur again.
Howard Knauf Webboard User Reg: 09-24-2003
Posts: 1555
Loc: Melbourne, Florida
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Cody,
I'm with David. All the drug dogs I've trained are not rewarded with a scented toy. The drills where the toy is associated with the odor should be enough. Once they realize a toy reward is forthcoming after a positive indication, they have the game figured out. I cant imagine what a pain it would be giving scented toys to my bomb dog when he was being trained for explosives. He had to learn over twice the amount of odors and had no problem whatsoever.
I have used scented towels in the past so as to play tug with the dog after a find but I have seen no advantage to this either.
Matthew Grubb Webboard User Reg: 09-27-2002
Posts: 637
Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.
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I was at a seminar last year that was real heavy on the scented towel as a primary reward for narc work…. I noticed a bunch of the passive dogs refused to interact with the scented towel…it would drop and when they smelled the drug odor on it they would alert and wait for their usual reward toy.
They did do some interesting work with the aggressive dogs however… my favorite involved them tying the scented reward towel to the bumper of a car so the dog had to tug the reward till the string broke. The class was split with about 35% of the dogs trained this way… they were just as good as the rest of the class.
I'll keep going the way I'm trianing then. Thanks for the advice. I think that would be a prob to give a passive alert dog a scented toy LOL. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />
when my dog was initially learning the odors, I gave him a scented reward toy, but then switched to giving him the jute toy. Either way, I didnt have any problems.
I use scented rewards for my K-9. However i often use rewards that are not scented and he and she is not phased by the differance. They are both agressive alert dogs, with passive I do not use scented rewards. To most it is just a preference.
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