Another New Sport
Apparently 2016 is the year of adventures in dog sports. With Lance being completely done with agility and obedience (minus maybe a few WCRL or CDSP trials where he can jump no height) he is looking for something to do. Very sassy corgi at home! I've still been doing a tiny bit of obedience training on nights he comes to the club with me and I've occasionally done some conditioning work at home. But I do best with structure. And the Corgi certainly needs to do something.
Enter nosework. Ordered my first kit from a nice local company!
I'll be honest, I'm not expecting to fall in love with the sport. The diabetic alert (scent trained) dogs at work are my least favorite to train of the 5 types I work with. Maybe because it's less concrete, less control? But maybe this will be different for me. At least there's a lot more "hunt drive" to the training vs waiting around for the scent to just happen. I'm sure the dogs will love it regardless of my feelings!
Lance's very first session yesterday. Since he already has an amazing trained sticky target to my hand and to a target, this first lesson was just about doing the target to the little tin. And then I added in a 2nd non scented tin to maybe get the tiniest idea across that some sniffing is involved in this.
Vito is going to play along too. Vito has always been a sniffer on walks instead of a runner and he is amazing at finding the tiniest scraps ever of tennis ball remnants. Vito used to have the honor of finding all the lost ball toys in the large yard at work even when under feet of snow!
Vito's first session yesterday was pretty darn similar to Lance. He also has a fabulous sticky target. (Reverse luring is amazing for teaching one!) So today's session focused on both Lance and Vito doing the sticky target to a plastic container. Lance did a pretty good job with only a few paws. Vito thought the game completely changed and was all about whacking it with his paw. Since his session was much more amusing than Lance's, here is Vito from today:
But if you're interested in learning more about nosework, there's a great class at the Fenzi Academy!
Have you thought of trying Barn Hunt for the sassy corgi? Lots of dogs really enjoy it, and come at it very naturally. Though the nosework probably gives you more things to train at home unless you want to put rats in tubes and buy bales of straw.
I did briefly think about it! I do have the rats :) I think Lance would absolutely love it. But I don't really want him jumping on and off hay bales with his disc issue and the limping :(
At least nosework will be easy to practice inside.
This is sooooo exciting! :D NW is my sport of choice, as I'm sure you know. :) Thrilled. Yay sassy corgi gets to do stuff again. :)