This was so sane. Thank you!

What a wonderful honest, open discussion! Thank you Cameron for putting this together!

Very interesting and most importantly Cameron's comments on trainers TALKING and sharing with each other even if they use a different technique! BRAVO and thank you - wish everyone would do this! As with many things in training - be it Pairing or Delayed (Operant) Conditioning spoken about here - have as many options and know of as many options as possible and suit the training to the dog in front of you. There are ways that work and ways that don't with individual dogs and talking about what works and doesn't, what the strengths and weaknesses are of each, then we all will improve and dogs will benefit - it shouldn't be a fight to sell a "system". Thanks for this video - very encouraging to see this type of discussion.

Applying this more to our line of SAR Trailing/tracking, I immediately thought of the scent box and straight legs (for tracking) we started using in order to pair odor and promote nose down. We didn't initially start with pairing, but we struggled when we switched disciplines from airscent to trailing. We have only ran a few sessions like this to see if it would promote nose down, but I too have a concern of doing it too long, or also promoting the search for the reward v. being in odor. Guess we will see soon how it pans out :D

I can confirm the issue of the dog now looking for the food and ignoring the odor after pairing even though it was just a few weeks (at weekly training)

I love this conversation.

Wow! The herding dog part of the conversation was spot on for my aussie shepherd Luna (she was a demo dog at your course in melbourne australia last year, with a strong background of obedience)! I'm going to play with a hybrid model for a few reps and see if it makes a difference to reduce false indications/offering behaviours to objects rather than her commitment to odour

What do you think about behavioral momentum and behavioral mass?

@FordK9

Ай бұрын

Well, we bring that up when we talk about one of the cons for doing pairing for too long. But this comes to play in various things that we do with lots of history or behavioral mass behind it and anytime you make some type of shift the more mass, the more difficult can be to make a change and that’s whether it’s something behavioral or something learned like an odor profile.

Thank you for this! Any thoughts on whether paring can be helpful in the face of challenging odor problem?

@FordK9

Ай бұрын

This is a valid question, and I think it could be a feasible option, but it's important to carefully consider the pros and cons. This decision would depend on the specific dog involved. I'd need to understand what aspects might pose a challenge to the dog and whether I could structure the training to clearly communicate, yet ensure success with as little assistance as possible. If something appears too challenging, it might be necessary to reevaluate whether we escalated the difficulty too quickly before the dog achieved sufficient fluency at a lower level. Additionally, it's crucial to remember that if we introduce a variable change that adds difficulty, we should temporarily lower the criteria needed to receive reinforcement. This adjustment helps ensure the dog can succeed on their first encounter with this new challenge. Once they adapt, we can gradually restore the original criteria to the level it was before introducing the change.

Do you believe that conditioning a dog to an odor via can in hand odor is "paired conditioning" because the reward is present and near the desired odor?

@FordK9

Ай бұрын

To best answer your question I would first look at context. In this case as you have described it, I would want to make sure the dog was not utilizing the context of its handler or a human, holding the odor as part of the picture to pay attention to or the context of this overshadowing the relevancy of the odor. To address this this is why we use some type of containment whether it be a box or a pipe or just a Tupperware container. Something that holds the odor and that I can have two of them one with odor, one without odor, and when the dog pays attention to the one with odor, that’s the one that gets reinforcement. The ability to switch these containers into different positions also helps the dog learn to make the choice the one that smells with this particular odor is the one to pay attention to. The good thing is by having two of the same containers. We can also help eliminate the relevancy of the container, both both as a visual and as an olfaction item. So specifically, addressing the scenario you gave again, I would be more looking at. Does the dog use the human context as a way to solve or the human is part of the picture and if I have human and reward item both having significant value, I would have some concern about , those two things having more relevance than odor. It could work, but if I had my choice, I would start off with some thing like the containment I mentioned above to help make sure I am isolating the relevance of the target odor and creating importance to that over all other things and with as minimal assistance as possible with a reinforcing item. Hope that helps.