Fringe Alerts with Stacy Barnett

In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla talks to Stacy Barnett about fringe alerts in detection dogs.

What is fringing?

• When a dog alerts to odor outside of the preferred range of where the indication should be, aka too far away
• The final response begins where sourcing ends, so with fringing, the sourcing ends prematurely, making the alert farther away from the scent than is preferred

Why does it happen?

• The behavior chain of sourcing and alerting is off balance
  • Over-enthusiastic for the search
  • Over emphasising the alert/not enough emphasis on sourcing the odor
• Different kind of setting with work/trial vs training
  • For a trial or working a job, you are under different stressors and you aren’t able to control the environment and set up
  • When under pressure, your behavior may be different which can be difficult for your dog to work with
• Differentiation of odor concentration
  • If working in a situation with different odor concentrations, they may start to conclude a certain concentration of odor and start alerting to only that strength of scent
• It may be too easy or too hard
• Genetics is a big deal, but training is a bigger deal

What are ways we can fix it?

• More balanced training sessions - both sourcing and alerting
• “Show me” cue
• Ignoring fringe alerts and encouraging them to keep working/”keep going” cue
• Working to get the “show me” cue or the “keep going” cue out of the behavior chain

What are the downfalls of the “show me” cue?

• Can cause your dog to rely on the handler to source
• Can become a prompted cue to alert
• It is important to make sure it doesn’t become part of the behavior chain

How do we build sourcing into our training?

• Set up for success
  • Smaller and shorter puzzles easy for them to source
  • More complicated puzzles to get them back into the sourcing mindset
• Increase the challenge level for the dogs skill level to keep the flow going
  • Too easy may be boring, too challenging may be too frustrating
• Hide placement is important in training sessions
  • The training doesn't come from the human, the training comes from the hide

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

• Sourcing Odor with Stacy Barrett
• Signal Detection Theory with Dr. Simon Gadbois

Where to find Stacy Barrett: Website | Podcast | Facebook | Instagram

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