Training day.

The best day of the week.

Training with Tino on June 19th, 2022, at Evans Creek Preserve.

This was a beautiful park with great trails, although it was a little more crowded than we would like. It was also warmer than ideal for Tino. Raphael was the target dog that Tino needed to find. Raphi’ s handler walked the scent trail with AllTrails turned on so that she could send it to me and I could verify if Tino was on the correct trail. This allows me to see his body language and see how he performs at the decision points.

Tino didn’t take much time checking out the scent item from Raphael because we have looked for Raphi many times in the past, and I’m sure Tino already smelled that we were on his scent trail. When presented the scent item, Tino just gives it a quick sniff and then mutters, “Yeah, I got it.”

In the middle, we came to a choice of left or straight. Tino checked both ways and then chose left, which was a dead end. This makes sense because the scent trail would have been doubled up there, where Raphi went in and out, creating the strongest scent.

At the next two turns, Tino compared the different directions before choosing. At the end, Tino starts to go toward the target dog and then turns around and goes the other direction, then comes back. I think this might be because one of the handlers went that way, although I’m not positive. After comparing scents, Tino did choose the right way pretty decisively. He walked up to Raphael, like, “Found you again.”

This was my first time using a GoPro to film training exercises. I wish I had been doing this all along because it was really interesting to watch his reactions and body language. Also, I just really love working with him, and it’s nice to have a video of him in action.

(You don’t need to turn the sound up since it’s mostly me breathing hard keeping up with Tino.)