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When my dog was younger I used to get her to smell a tennis ball and then when she was prevented from seeing hit it into the field next to the house.
I'd then let her out into the field and watch her search for the ball.
She would zig zag the field and it was fascinating to watch her do it.
Sight was hardly a factor at all.
Even when she was close enough to see it in the grass she would still be using her sense of smell, and only when she'd really established the location would she use sight.
I miss those games as she's a grand old lady now and not really interested.
A dog we had many years ago had a great nose and a ton of desire to Find It! My hubby would rub a golf ball behind his ears, or between his hands, then smack it out into the field with a club. Turn the dog loose.... go get a beer, start dinner.... back she would come with that golf ball! Might take her 30 min, but she never gave up!
And when I ran my Doggie Bed and Breakfast, every evening we would have the Cookie Toss. We allowed all the boarding dogs to run together in a big fenced in field and I would take hands full of little biscuits and throw them out into the grass. The dogs spent an hour or more searching through the grass for those biscuits. Kept them busy, made them use their nose and brains. It was always fun to watch a new dog figure out the game.
When my dog was younger I used to get her to smell a tennis ball and then when she was prevented from seeing hit it into the field next to the house.
I'd then let her out into the field and watch her search for the ball.
She would zig zag the field and it was fascinating to watch her do it.
Sight was hardly a factor at all.
Even when she was close enough to see it in the grass she would still be using her sense of smell, and only when she'd really established the location would she use sight.
I miss those games as she's a grand old lady now and not really interested.
My seniors don't seem to enjoy this sort of activity anymore, either...I guess their sense of smell isn't what it used to be. The oldest can hardly find the treat even when it is right under her nose (literally).
My seniors don't seem to enjoy this sort of activity anymore, either...I guess their sense of smell isn't what it used to be. The oldest can hardly find the treat even when it is right under her nose (literally).
I think her smell is fine, her joints aren't.
She still wanders round the field but maybe I should try a gentler version of find the ball.
One of my dogs loved playing scent games. Some I invented and some he invented. One of his games was finding a rock in a gravel driveway. I would pickup a rock that I knew I could identify again and roll it around on my hands to get my scent on it. I would then hold Tuckers head facing me while I threw the rock in the gravel driveway. He would then scent it out and bring it back. Never failed. He always found the right one. One time 4 of us threw out rocks. One at a time, we each gave Tucker our scent and then sent him out with the command "find mine" (he was a utility level obedience competition dog so knew this command). Each time he found that persons rock in the driveway. Another experiment that we tried was dropping the scented rock in a bucket of water. It took him a few minutes to realize it was in there, about the amount of time it took for the scent to rise to the surface is my guess, and then he dove in and got the rock. He LOVED this game! He invented it.
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