This search was in a classroom. Air conditioning was running and it was quite cool inside. Having used this area before, I know the airflow can make sourcing hides more challenging.
Besides other hides in the area, I set 3 very close to each other, a low/high/low. Very few dogs got all 3 hides and I don’t think any got them all at one time. None of these hides were “grabbing” dogs as they first entered the space. The odor from the hides appeared to be pooling across to the front of the room. Dogs spent some time there before narrowing the odor down to one of the hides.
Magic is being highlighted for how he worked the last hide off of a previous found hide. He finds the low hide on the left first. He starts to work the high hide on the table and then turns to solve the competing low hide on the right. This is common when odor from hides are converging – they’ll start to work one hide and then catch more information for another. He comes back later and anchors off that low hide to work back to the high hide. Once he has solved the other 2 hides, he can now recognize that there is another unique hide to find. Very cool! The handler also lets him go back to the found hide and does not interrupt or distract him from working odor.
It’s a good reminder that dogs may go back to a found hide and use that information to solve another close by hide.