Like pretty much everyone else beyond very important politicians, we have spent the last 2 months or more in lockdown.
As we struggle with the new normal, life for Venn rolls on by. After coming out of season with nothing more to show than a couple of attempts at escapology, she promptly went into a phantom pregnancy. Her first birthday was a disappointing lock-down affair, and we have been having all kinds of difficulty getting her to eat. She went completely off her initial choice of kibble, so we bought another brand, which she wouldn’t eat either. Fortunately Kip will eat anything, so this is not going to waste! In some desperation, we moved onto tinned food, which would not be our food of choice for all manner of reasons, not least of which is convenience on the move. Anyway, she seemed to settle with that and we managed to get her weight back up to where it was pre-stomach upset. It seems that over the last week it has again become more difficult to get her to eat the prescribed amount, and we may be needing to make another change. We shall see.
During the initial phases of lockdown we had access to some really handy sheep fields, and got plenty of work in in anticipation of our stock test. However, the time soon came for the sheep to be moved to their mountain pastures and that was that. About a month later we did happen across a couple of ewes with lambs in tow, and judging by the encounter, the training still seems to be holding good. In the meantime, we have been doing lots of reinforcement work on “stop at distance” so that I can shut down any chasing behaviour if it develops.
We have continued working with scent boxes, but as we have been doing this since November it is increasingly challenging to keep it interesting, despite little changes in location and setup. Over the last week or so, and despite a vocal and energetic response to starting the game, her scenting performance has dipped, with an increase in the number of false indications (previously pretty much unheard of) or partial/ambiguous ones. With no formal training going on, and with our pre-acceptance status hanging over us, I have not been able to access anyone to discuss our scenting performance, so are doing our best to sort it out for ourselves. After a bit of head scratching, I think she has either just got lazy in her adolescence, or has worked out that she can make the game last longer by messing about. In both situations, either by not trying to find the target, or by faffing around, she was still eventually getting the reward. So it’s tough-love time now. Ideally I’d like Venn to indicate as soon as she encounters the scent she has been sent to look for, but I allow her to examine each box and then an opportunity to backtrack to the correct one. If this doesn’t result in a correct and good indication, then the game is stopped without reward and we go back inside. About an hour or so later we rerun the game, and pretty much every time she has gone directly to the correct box and indicated well, so I think we might be on the right lines.
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