Just ask Flash about his new "job." I read on Cesar Milan's website how to exercise your dog indoors by hiding treats around the house and letting him find them. This idea coincided with my reading a book by Robert Crais called Suspect in which a wounded police officer teams up with a wounded war dog to catch bad guys. The book describes how the German Shepherd's nose can differentiate a gazillion smells to seek and find a particular item. Aha.
So I tried this with Flash. It's a new game involving treats, so he's into it. Here's how it goes: I get a handful of some kind of treats. (I started with dog cookies, but upped the smell quotient with string cheese and pup-peroni sticks.) I let him smell the treats (at first he just wanted to eat them), then put him in a sit stay in the kitchen while I hide the treats in the living room.
The first time I tried this he (1) didn't want to stay in the kitchen and kept peeking through the doorway and (2) he didn't know he was supposed to look around for the treats. I had to practically lead him to each treat. The second time I used pup-peroni sticks and he was getting the idea with less help. The third time he knew what to expect and did a good stay in the kitchen and, when released from the stay, he vaulted into the living room to search for his treats. This time the treats were some good, stinky string cheese and he found almost all of them right away.
Now that he has the idea, I'll go back to the cookies and see it he can sniff them out. I have to admit, he isn't a real good sniffing dog. But, if the treats were all running around the house, I have no doubt he could herd them up.
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