Training a lab to find sheds

Shelby was kind of a natural at recovering sheds but I never really worked with her on making it a desired command or task that we specifically went out to do. When I get my new puppy I want to work with her more on specifically going shed hunting in the spring. Has anyone had any experience training a tracking dog to also be a shed dog?? I'm wondering how I need to go about having her distinguish between hunting wounded deer and hunting sheds.....I usually tell the dogs "Lets find it!....Let's hunt it up!"....when we go tracking......I guess I just need to come up with a completely different command from the beginning and have her recognize the difference.

Any advice is appreciated.....

I would absolutely use separate commands.

For sheds I would get some antlers - starting out, every time she pays any attention to the antler mark and reward. Then after a couple of weeks of her associating antlers = reward, then I would move on to a command, mark and reward. Once she has knows the command I would then start hiding the antler, easy places, and let her find them with command mark and reward. I would go slow. She is going to lose concentration if you hide the antler somewhere not obvious starting out.

Also, when working on this I would remove all distractions. All toys, other people. You want to set her up for success. If you have a lot of distraction starting out she could lose her confidence.

Thanks....the difficult part seem to me to be to get the dog to distinguish when we're out there to JUST look for one or the other.....For instance, we might be out searching for a wounded deer and Shelby come across a shed. She'd pick it up and bring it to me but I didn't want her to think that suddenly I wanted her searching for sheds.....I didn't know whether to praise her or scold her.

I think In that scenario you could either praise her or just ignore her and tell her to hunt it up or whatever command you use to track a deer. It would depend on the training level and your confidence in her being able to distinguish the two commands. I definitely would not get on to her. You’d be sending mixed emotions at that point.

Same scenario as sit vs down command. You wouldn’t scold them for downing when you asked them to sit. You would just redirect them.

Different line of work/sport but i train my canine in 3 languages and also hand signals. The hand signals are only used when audible isn't needed at times and close in work. I joke around about them being multilingual but English is used as daily engagement/etc. German is used in sport and another language for serious work. When i had labs for field work i used hand signals,English for daily task and redneck for hunting.

Very interesting there.....I'll have to give that some thought for sure.

Going to sound crazy but when English is used it's basically for pet/manners/house and they are nowhere as driven as they are when spoke to in the other 2 languages. I ONLY use German and the other language when truly working them and they are also rewarded a much higher value reward. I always have to make sure i have that HVR on me.

Different line of work/sport but i train my canine in 3 languages and also hand signals. The hand signals are only used when audible isn't needed at times and close in work. I joke around about them being multilingual but English is used as daily engagement/etc. German is used in sport and another language for serous work. When i had labs for field work i used hand signals,English for daily task and redneck for hunting.