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 You can support the K9 Conservationists Podcast by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/k9conservationists. K9 Conservationists Website | Merch | Support Our Work | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok