Article update

Today was the 5th day I've done Week 6 of Around the Clock scent articles with Sonic. It it the week when you are supposed to stop putting cheese on the scented article, and it is the week that can be problematic. I did week 5 five times, and on the final day had only the tiniest smear of cheese on the scented one.

As I've come to expect, going from that teeny tiny little bit of cheese to none has caused her to make mistakes. Since she'd made zero mistakes before, I hadn't had any reason to correct anything. Sonic has erred in slightly different ways each time, but it seems to be more of a problem with the scented leather than the scented metal. Yesterday, she did both metals fine, but the 1st leather wrong. I decided after that to go back to the teensy little bit of cheese on the correct leather one.

At the end of yesterday's session, I pulled out my bag of article wires which I made a few months ago from some leftover garden fencing. One of my students got the idea from another local trainer as an alternative to tying the incorrect ones to a mat.

I put the wires on each of the unscented leather articles at the end of yesterday's session. Sonic did pick up one leather by the top wire that was sticking up, but after that, she seemed appropriately deterred by the wire, and kept searching for the one without. I did put a tiny bit of cheese on the 1st leather, but not after that.

I plan to continue to do the Week 6 sequences until she gets them right several sessions in a row, then move on to Week 7.