Dogs learn remarkably fast if we allow them to, and if we teach them in a fair and understandable way. When playing scent work, always do a multiple hide search, and always search for a different number of hides each time.
Find three, four, or more hides, and randomly rotate the number of hides in each search, always finding a different number of hides in each successive search. This way Jackie learns she will almost always hear "Find more!" and understands to keep searching.
At this stage in our learning, do three-minute-long searches, and always time each search. If Jackie returns to alert on the same hide, remember to only pay once for any hide; just cue "Find more!" and continue the search. If Jackie returns to the same hide a third time, never pay twice for the same hide, but rather remove that hide from the search.
Jackie and I closed out our 30-day challenge with Odor Recognition Test (ORT) practice, handler discrimination, containers, and even a challenging double-blind interior search set by my nephew while he was visiting!
I told my nephew, who has no experience with dogs or scent work, to "make it easy for her to find." So he hid it up inside the robot vacuum cleaner tower, taped onto the bag full of unemptied-for-weeks vacuum debris (dust, dog hair, dander, human dander, etc)!
Unknown to me before the search, my nephew also "tried out" different hiding areas by placing the scent source in several areas in the room, each time changing his mind, before he settled on a hiding place that suited him. So source spots were lingering throughout the room! Jackie still managed to alert the actual hiding spot source within 35 seconds.
Jackie plays ORT, Containers, HD, and Interior searches in the final days of our 30 day scent work challenge:
