Maintaining your Alert for Nosework and Scentwork 

In my opinion, you should always advocate for what’s best with your dog. Even though a trainer may know more about a particular discipline they don’t know what’s best for your dog and some cases. In this particular case a type of indication, such as a focus is in many times a cosmetic desire by a handler or trainer. if your dog is becoming confused or losing motivation to do the Detection work then this is a far bigger issue than a cosmetic appearance of an indication. In some cases, it is important to create focus at the source of odor for clarity but if this is just for fun and for sport, there are tons of teams out there who do not have a focus type indication yet still do quite well within the program. Again, always advocate for what’s best for your dog and have an open conversation with your trainer.

@@FordK9 Thank you very much for your reply. This is what my gut was telling me. Early in my dog's training, in puppy class, I deferred to a trainer about something and I've regretted it ever since. I'm getting the same gut feeling about this issue.

Hello, we actually cover that and much more in our Block 1 online class at www.fordk9.com

@@sodawild that is the exact definition of a terminal bridge (aka) Conditioned Reinforcer… once signal happens behavior ends and reward delivered even if delayed due to distance to location of reward etc.

@@FordK9 yes, agree. But the take away from this video is that the dog should maintain alert response even after the mark and should wait there for reward. I'm not seeing issues with my dog breaking the response after I mark. Early in train I would try to be close to the dog when I marked so the reward would follow quickly. Now that the dog understands the game I don't need to be close. She will come to me for reward or meet me as I come to her. Works for us.

@@sodawild I think the misunderstanding that you’re having is we’re not saying the word alert as a marker. The word alert is for the handler to notify the judge. They found the odor but many do not use this as a marker word or a terminal bridge release. So what we are meaning is if you say alert and the dog breaks away prior to you giving your terminal marker whatever word you use yes click, etc. the dog needs to go back until released if it were to break away when you said the word alert, the dog needs to maintain its position until released by the Terminal bridge if that’s what you’re using

Depends on what program you’re competing in