Posted by Bob Manning on October 16, 2009, 2:28 pm, in reply to "Please clarify..."
Message modified by board administrator October 16, 2009, 5:33 pm
Mike, Some tines I think the use of the English language escapes me.
My detection work, as I think most peoples are, is an extension of the retrieve. Natural, not forced. you throw the toy for the dog, he goes and gets it. You throw it in tall grass he goes and finds it, having to hunt a little. You do this long enough pairing a command with it so eventually the dog is cued by the command and will start to look for his toy. Now the toy can be stored with the drugs, and or hidden in the same cabinet, drawer, etc with the first drug odor. He finds the toy, because he knows what it smells like, but he can't help but noticing the smell of the first odor also and begins to associate it with his toy. He smells his toy and that first odor, tries to get at it, you praise him, open the drawer, he sees his toy and gets it. You then praise more and play with him, with his toy. Throw or tug. Eventually you hide just the first odor, no toy. When he shows interest, and he is looking at where the odor is hidden and not you, you bounce the toy off that spot so it seems to the dog like it jumped out of where he smelled the odor. Then you build on that and add the new odors to the first for a while and then separately. Way oversimplified, books could be written on it, but this is the basic idea. So to answer your first question, no the toy is never eliminated, though with some dogs it probably could, replacing it with just praise. but why not let them have their toy?
In the second question I did not mean these three thing to be steps, but rather principles I keep in mind as the dual purpose dogs training plan evolves.. And no, the prey item is never used in bitework at all. Unless you consider little things I might do with him, when I am playing with the tug toy I use in narcotics and sometimes in ob. Like playfully hitting on the dog or letting him win it when he bites hard, shakes his head or bites deeper. But these things are small and just in the context of the dog and I playing. The toy I use for search work, and sometimes in OB is only wielded by me, never a stranger. And I never use a sleeve as a toy. We don't play with sleeves. Toys I use are never large, but more retriever dummy sized.
Like I said above I sometimes use them as additional motivation in OB. But if the dogs view of the decoy is correct, they should have little value as motivation in your control work in PP because his affinity for the man should be so much higher than a mere toy, that it, the toy, should not be motivating at all during bite work.. So I don't use it. Instead the man is the motivation. "If I do like my handler says, I am more likely to be sent. If I don't, I am never sent." Control becomes no brainer.
So if I understand you last statement correctly, no they are not the same as in man work I never use a toy at all.
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