Name: Jasper
Breed: English Springer Spaniel
Age: 1 Year old (2023)
Reward: Food
Location: Red Hill Truffles, Red Hill.
Previous Training:
Training inside the pavilion with paired real truffle within visible tea strainer. Had been doing well in this low distraction indoor environment. But it was time to ramp things up a bit and challenge him.
Main areas to work on:
Focus under distractions (with many people)
Doing outside searches in varying weather conditions
Confidence searching by himself
Stable and easy to understand alert
Obedience
Good Search stamina
Re showing location
Course: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.
Jasper’s training is a little bit different to my previous students. Unlike the other dogs where I was training the owner to do the training, with Jasper I was visiting Red Hill every weekend during the truffle season. I personally was doing most of the training with Jasper and providing updates to his owners as I went through the sessions.
I started the Beginner course with Jasper mid-June 2023. Starting indoors and working our way to outdoors. We had to build up his confidence to work away from his other doggy friends. It only took one training session for him to realize he could search and find all by himself. The second training session he was eager to search independently outside. Jasper’s is an amazing truffle dog, he flew through the Beginners aspect in 2 sessions (over a weekend) mostly due to his prior training with his owners. He spent the last 2 weeks of June in Intermediate. I realized that he was finding the hides too easily and needed new challenges. On 1st July 2023 he was showing us real underground truffles marked by Kovu and found his first unaided truffle on 21st July 2023. He moved into Advanced mid July 2023. By early August he was helping his owner to pin point the exact location of a truffle which they had been attempting to find that Maddy (their other truffle dog) had alerted to.
Future:
Currently (August 2023) we are working through the more challenging aspects of the Advanced course and also some challenges specific to Jasper’s working conditions. He will be hunting with large crowds following along during the truffle hunting events. I think he will be ready to do truffle hunting events during the summer truffle season of 2023.