Scent Articles update

I've been a good girl the last two weeks and have been doing scent articles with Lance and Vito almost every day!  I'm also really happy to say that my determination has been paying off and Lance is getting much more confident about the exercise.  Previously he would do very well with finding my dumbbell on every send but the first one.  That first send Lance would run out, sniff the right one and look like he's going to grab it, but then hesitate and work the rest of the pile.  Almost always he would would stop and look at me.   Usually I smile and don't say anything and then Lance goes back to work.  Sometimes he would eventually bring me back the right one but othertimes he would pick it up and drop it several times.  This was only on the very first article, any sends after that would be nice and snappy.  He would even do this if I had only a few articles out.

But that is all written in the past tense as I have seemed to stumble on an easy fix!! I had always started with the metal dumbbell as that is what we first used when learning the scent work and I figured I should get the harder one out of the way.  By simply switching to leather first Lance is much more confident and doing great!  He then has no problem by the time I get to metal.  I usually do a few of the leather before I switch so I have yet to see if Lance could do metal on the 2nd send.  I am very psyched about his performance though and see ourselves one tiny step closer to being ready for utility.