What's everyone been up to? I finished this book recently. The cover kinda sucks but I enjoyed it. It takes awhile to get going but it kind of reminds me of Jurassic Park in real life with Grizzlies. There had been no fatal bear attacks in 57 years and then on one night two women were killed by bears in two separate attacks in different parts of the park. The book tells the story.

I got inspired by Darwin's key finding abilities of my mantrailing instructor's dog and I started to train my dogs to find my key. I'm training the indication ATM and it's going very well, especially for Dougal. I assume that's because they did scent work before. Now my dilemma is the cue - shall I try the same one as they had in scent work (search)? Or should I introduce another one? (You could argue that instead of starting from scratch I should have just introduced it as a new scent but I really want a solid and sticky indicaton.) The problem is that they have so many cues, scent and track for trailing, the Hungarian form of find it for finding food... I think I's get confused if I'd introduced a new one. And Dougal is going deaf anyway. What do you guys think? In the video you'll see Dougal trying different things like mouthing and pawing the object. It's quite normal for him, I'm going to use extinction. With him I want to go for duration now anyway The trickier thing is that Dee is too quick, she looks away before the food hits the ground so I'm a but stuck as I can't add duration just yet... Or who knows, I might give it a go and see what happens

I had a hoopers 1-1 today & it got me thinking more & more about this question. How much do you take into account the handler & their individual learning style when running your training? A few times on my 1-1 the trainer has told me that I’m overthinking things & this is transferring to Freddie & affecting his confidence. ( which I appreciate is true) I’ve been working hard to try not to do this but on reflection I feel that if I’m overthinking it’s because I’m not at the unconscious competence stage so I have to think harder about the task. So my conclusion was if I’m an overthinker just telling me not to overthink wont help, same as if someone was scared of snakes saying don’t be scared won’t help. Do you as trainers adjust to handler as well or is it all about the dog? This is mostly my curiosity & interest 😁

Do you toss treats for your dogs to pick up off the floor? Do you train your dogs to only take things from your hands?

This just came up in my Facebook feed. Interested to hear people's thoughts https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/feb/04/demand-has-increased-without-a-doubt-the-shocking-rise-of-personal-protection-dogs?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcAPzMOBjbGNrA_MucGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHsoKD5MuwE1wMnTGMguz7NL0KIxo1PvbCWpwzhURUuHV_5zKxpfzjIb_NvZB_aem_kqYciefw3cCTuaPxWrhFlA