Good nose!

Last night we were playing one of  Marley's favorite games - "greenball".   We have a soft spiky green ball that we toss for him to catch and return.  He gets a piece of his kibble at the couch when he returns it and a piece tossed across the room to get him over where he's far enough away to catch a good toss.  At some point the ball rolled into a hidden spot and something else distracted all of us (probably Charlotte wanting to come inside, followed by giving her some kibble or dry food). 

The green ball had disappeared.  We looked in the corners.  We looked under things.  We looked inside things.  We looked behind things.  No luck.  So we brought out a substitute ball.

Now, the substitute ball brought its own issues - he wanted to chew it instead of retrieve it.  I'll say more about that after I finish with the green one.

So we continued the game, more or less, with the substitute ball.  And eventually we finished.  We looked again for the green ball before we went to bed.  I looked for it again when I got up today.  We played the game with the substitute ball.

Later on, after yet another search, I told Marley to "find it, greenball".  He set off about the house sniffing & looking in all kinds of places.  It was several minutes and I had even lost track of his assignment when he started whining at the space under the phone table.  He'd stick his nose in the small space then pull it out and whine again.  I immediately knew he'd found it.  I got a "grabber" and pulled it out.  It was all the way back to the wall, in a corner under the table.  He found it by nose.

The practice he's been doing to find his treats is paying off.  Most days he gets a "greenie" and a black (charcoal) biscuit that are placed around the house for him to find.  He goes around the rooms where his treats might be (we never put them in the spare bedroom, rarely in the kitchen or dining room) with his nose in the air, circling in on the scent until he finds his treats.  It might be time to start having him discriminate between scents ... might have to think about how to go about doing that.  Perhaps the first step will be to have him bring something in return for a treat, then start having him bring specific items (out of an array), then by scent.  Something for me to think about.

So, back to the substitute "greenball".  When I found that the soft spiky balls fit in the "ChuckIt" I bought a couple of spares.  I'd used an orange one in the ChuckIt outside, and bought a green one and a red one.  We'd been playing with the new green one in the fetching game.  The red one was a backup for either the orange or green one.  The red one has a slightly different texture, softer, and Marley was trying to use it as a chew toy.   He'd even gotten it partially deflated.  We ended the game to indicate these balls are not chew toys.

This morning, before he found the green one, we were playing with the red one.  At one point he had it half deflated, sort of half inside-out.  He dropped it when he heard the air hissing out of it.  When he dropped it, it began to whistle.  He stepped back, looking at it.  He circled it.  He cocked his head.  He sniffed the carpet near it.  Because the hole is tiny, it took a long time for it to re-inflate, so it took quite a while for him to decide it was safe to pick it up.

Once we had the green one back, he got a very nice "high value" treat and we did another round of the fetch game.  He doesn't try to chew the green ball.  I'm not sure he'll want to chew the red one after it sounded off at him, either.