INTENTION CANINE

Here’s a short video of Riff on 11-4-24 at 6 months old.

I’m training Riff to perform a variety of Service Dog tasks including scent discrimination. I plan to place him into Service Dog work when the appropriate person with a disability is identified.

In Service Dog work, scent discrimination can be used to detect shifts in blood glucose levels. This useful skill can also help the dog detect a serious food allergen. It doesn’t matter what scent is used as the primary training tool, as once the dog understand the concept to seek out a specific scent, he can be trained to alert to a number of different scents.

Riff arrives to the training session knowing the behavior to touch an object with his nose to the cue words, “touch it.” The object I used was a metal tin with a perforated lid. It was empty when he first learned to “touch it.”

In this video, I have added a small swab of Birch oil inside the metal vessel and ask Riff to perform the “touch it” behavior. There are many ways to teach a dog how to perform scent discrimination. This is my method which hinges on the fact that if a dog touches an object with his nose, he’s likely to get a whiff of its scent. Presenting the vessel with a “Hey, check this out!” energy vibe usually encourages a dog to move towards it, and that often includes touching the object with his nose.

I have found it to be critical to quickly move from the stage where I present the object in my hand, to the point where I am no longer holding the object. I want Riff to move out and away from me to go look for scent. Therefore, I stop presenting it, and begin moving the vessel farther away from my body in a stationary position. Finally, I affix it onto a remote location, which for me is a small, vertical stand with Velcro dots to which I can attach the container with the scent.

Once Riff is moving to the remote stand to perform the “touch it” behavior, I add a second metal container which does not contain scent. I refer to this is the Control vessel. If Riff touches the Control vessel, I ignore the behavior. Every time he touches the scented vessel, I reward him.

If I remain calm, quiet, and patient, it allows Riff the opportunity to think and discover the goal of this game. It’s all about providing Riff an environment where he can learn through experimentation at his own pace. It’s not about me trying to teach him the game through constant chatter or pressuring him to work faster.

Riff cannot ignore the scent of objects anymore than we can ignore visual images that flood the environment in which we find ourselves. All the visual information that enters our eyes is processed by our subconscious brain, evaluated, categorized and stored for future use. However, most of that intel is filtered and only some of it moves to our consciousness where we can intelligently react to it. At any given moment, visual images that our brain considers insignificant information don’t stimulate any sort of response from us.

A dog’s primary sense isn’t visual, but rather is his scent perception. All the infinite scents a dog perceives are likely processed the way that we process visual images. If they aren’t deemed significant, the dog’s conscious mind simply ignores them. The training method that I employ in this video helps Riff turn what is an insignificant scent into a significant one. It relies on his motivation to solve the problem in order to receive the reward. I include praise along with the food reward to take advantage of a good working dog’s need to partner with a person. In that way, the food reward can eventually be removed and the dog will continue to work on the task because he has a work ethic and loves to receive my praise (sans the food motivators.)

Once Riff begins to choose the scented vessel over the Control (unscented) vessel, it’s time to swap the locations of the Scented versus Control. At first, Riff chooses the location where the scented vessel had been as the object he believes will earn him a treat. I remain patient and quiet and allow him to think and experiment.

The training session lasted just ten minutes and it’s quite interesting to see how Riff moves through the process of discovering the objective of the exercise.