Sunday's search training

I didn't have time to write yesterday about our search training on Sunday so here it is.

Riva had five "victims" and I had a person waiting halfway to the search area when I brought him to the center line. After I pointed him to the direction I wanted him to search, the victim would walk a little way to the opposite direction from us and then hide behind a bush or something. Then I would let Riva go and he would run to the victim and get his reward. While Riva was eating the treats from the victim I walk up to them and calmly attached his leash. Then we went back to the centerline together and an other person would be waiting on the other side for a similar excercise. The idea of this excercise is to teach him to go straight forward into the direction I point, there is not much searching involved in this kind of excercise. Riva did well, he advanced to the people who were about 30-40 meters away without hesitation, and I didn't screw up badly either.

I think we will start working on his alert behaviour soon. I'm glad that at least so far it looks like bark alert will suit him very well, he is open, friendly and confident with people in all kinds of situations. I'm not very familiar with bringsel alert and there are some aspects in it that I don't like, mainly the high risk for false alerts.