Ongoing car work with Catty - Part 2

As I've mentioned, Catty is complicated she gets motion sickness and has car anxiety.  We don't know what starts first but, they feed off of each other. So we are using the herbs, then a calming cap, short drives and nose work to create a different physical/emotional response to the car ride. 

You can read about that in my post Ongoing car work with Catty - Part-1  

After getting Catty comfortable with the calming cap, we then started driving a couple blocks (before she starts drooling).  Then we stop, take off the cap, get out of the car and do Nose Work for 5-10 minutes. Then back in the car, calming cap on and home we go.  All while reinforcing her with treats.  Catty and I have been doing this daily and it's going well.

So, not only is Catty feeling different about riding in the car, she's getting really good at nose work. And, the great thing about nose work is that it can be done anywhere!

Below is a series of searches that we did as soon as we got out of the car.  All of this took no more than 10 minutes.

Catty is "on odor" meaning she searches to locate odor.  The target odor is hidden and it's one of three natural essential oils - birch, anise or clove

The target odor is hidden in small tins/tubes as well as other small "containers".   When the dog finds the odor they "alert" the handler.

Of course in the below videos I know where the odor is located.  However in a nose work trial neither the dog nor the handler know where the odor is hidden.  You have to work as a team to locate the odor and above all you need to trust your dog!

We started off with container searches. You will see there are 6 containers of which only 1 has the odor. 

One of the advanages of video taping is that the human can see what they need to work on.  In the above video's I'm not rewarding at source.  I'm giving her the reward too far from the odor. You want to always reward right at source as this give the dog a clear message that they are being rewarded for locating the source odor.  

We move onto some exterior searches.  In an exterior search the odor can be hidden anywhere in the search area.

I was much better at rewarding Catty at source - good job handler!

And here's the OOPS!!  

Going to the bathroom in the search area would be a fault in a trial.  

Onto our next exterior search - way to go Catty!  

That little white thing stuck in the stump is a lip balm container with odor located inside.

And rounding out our exterior searches.  Hides can be up to 4 feet off the ground. Catty says no problem! She does really well with elevated hides.

And here's couple great pictures of her locating an elevated hide

"Alert!!"

remember to feed at the source of the odor



Catty loves this game of nose work!

So as you can see we are hard at work, having fun and changing Catty's emotional response to car rides.  We will keep building the duration/distance of driving and hopefully with more practice time, Catty will feel differently about car rides!