Getting my Dog to locate Sheds

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I got home from work tonight and sat down on the coach with a piece of Pizza. My Irish setter "Gracie" was sitting on the floor chewing on her rawhide bone.I grabbed on to the rawhide and decide to hide it on her and see how good her "sniffer" was working.She immediately found it and seemed interested in playing this game of hide and seek'so I proceeded to hide it again this time alittle better .She immediately started to search for it and found.i rewarded her with a piece of pepporoni of my slice of pizza.Then it came to me!!!How about i grab one of the Sheds above the T.V. and get her to snif it really good and Hide it and then tell her to "Find" and immediately reward her when she finds it? Well I ended up doing that about five different times and she was getting good!! Now for the test!! I grabbed a diferent shed than the one we where using in the House, and grabbed it with a glove.I left 'Gracie" in the house and went into the backyard and hid the new Shed.I came back into the house and told "Gracie" to "Find" she darted passed me and went on a "hunt'.As soon as I put her out I closed the door and ran over to the Oven to get another piece of Pepperoni;before i got back to the backdoor I heard her clang the Shed in her mouth on the deck. I immediately praised her and rewarded her with the Pepporoni!! I repeated this about three more times and she responded the same way!! I am not a dog trainer, but does'nt this seem like this could work great for her to get trained to find Sheds this Spring?

[coyotebandit]

Sounds promising! Any good hunting dog has a good nose, hopefully she will make a good shed hunting dog for you!

I have done some work with my springer pup, ever since she was 7 weeks old, she has been carrying a shed around the house! I just need to work on the hide and seek part, as she has a great nose and will tear into any cover.

I know one thing I read about the topic is to keep training all year long, a couple short sessions a week will keep them ready for shed season!

[HingeTree1992]

My dog has brought many shed's from the woods over the years. They deffinitly can be used to find shed's. She is out running through the woods a majority of the time and last spring she found shed's from two different bucks. One shed was really nice while the other one was from a buck I was hunting last hunting season. As for the big shed, I had no idea there was a buck that big running around our woods. Its surprising that I never saw him last season considering I spent many hours in the woods.