November 26, 2023

Sorry I haven't been posting, but we have been tracking regularly.  I am walking and putting a food drop every 5th step.  I vary the length with the max being about 100 yards.  In the past week:

Sunday afternoon at 2 pm (11/19) - 3 tracks at the Mashburn's place (60, 80 and 100 yards).  They have recently cut the grass/weeds so not as long a cover as it has been in the past.  Vivi came out like gangbusters on the first track, pulling all the way and not distracted by very much.  Just one slight check of something off the track (have no idea what).  The 2nd and 3rd tracks she was a little more distracted.  She would track about 10-20 yards, then pop her head up to look around.  Then she seems to remember she is out there for tracking and goes about another 10-20 yards, before she pops that head up to look around.  FOMO! :)

Monday afternoon at 4 pm (11/20) - just time enough to get one track in about 100 yards beside the parking lot at the golf course across the road.  Short cover and dry.  Also, since this was a new (to her) place with more distractions (people and cars), I did a food drop every 3 steps.  Any time a car left the parking lot, she had to pop that head up.  Once it was gone, she would get back to it.

Thursday at 11 am (Thanksgiving Day - 11/23) - used the playing field at the old Watkins Annex in Midlothian for 2 tracks.  Short cover. Two tracks (75 and 100 yards).  She did great with very few pop-ups of the head and, when she did, it was very brief.  Not much going on to distract her at this location on the holiday I guess.  Afterwards, when we got home, we worked on article indications, because today she was tending to want to fly past the article and then come back to it.  It's like it takes a minute or two for the fact that she saw the article to get up to her brain and then her response to go to the article takes another minute to get to her legs.  Does that make sense?

Friday morning at 9 am (11/24) - I laid one track at the Mashburn's place with lots of articles.  My pattern was 5 steps, food drop, 5 steps, food drop, 5 steps, article with food inside and on top of it, then repeat.  The track was about 100 yards long.  She stayed on the track and focused, but I have yet to get an automatic down from her.  I have to always tell her to down.  She did use her nose to kind of push around the article.  I think that was her way to try to get to the food inside.

* A little sidenote:  We went to a scent work trial on Saturday (11/25).  Besides the regular element classes we always enter, we entered the Novice and Advanced Handler Discrimination classes.  Very few clubs offer HD classes so I try to take the opportunity to enter it when it is offered.  We have our Novice HD title and had one leg in Advanced going into this trial.  We haven't had a great pass rate at HD in the past (maybe 50%, if that).  Anyway, Vivi rocked it and Q'd in all 4 HD classes!  I really think working on article indications is what did it!

Sunday at noon (11/26) - Cold day!  Ground wet from earlier rain.  We did two tracks (both about 100 yards) with food drops every 5 steps.  She did well!  Just some brief pop-ups of the head every so often.  She did stop at both articles, but not automatic down.  

I did have a question about articles.  I have been using 2 different tops of cloth gloves and then I also got some old leather wallets at Goodwill that I have been using.  Should I also be using metal or plastic articles?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

March 4, 2025

Image
  QUESTION :  What should you do if your start article has been blown 6 feet directly to the right of your start flag?   This happened to us today on our 2nd track.  Since Vivi went to the glove, I had her down and gave her a treat.  I then moved it to the start flag where I had her down and treated her before we started to track.  Later I was thinking that was not the correct thing to do because I seem to remember a discussion at the November tracking test about not being allowed to put the article on the ground to re-scent the dog and I thought that might apply in this case. Some of Vivi's distractions at the start of the 1st track: A decapitated bird (I thought it was a chicken, but the owner of the property said it wasn't a chicken but she didn't know what it was.  They do not own chickens so something dropped it there. Knobbin - His friend, Bentley, died earlier this year so he has been alone, but now he has a new friend... hopefully, they ar...
Read more

March 6, 2025

Image
  I did food drops every 10 again even though I should have done 12 because it was quite windy.  I will go up to 12 for our next session since she has done well with 10 even in the wind.
Read more

January 3, 2025

Image
 Happy New Year! 🥳 We went tracking this afternoon. Our goal was to do a multi-turn track with short legs to work on turns. She did not seem very focused after the first few steps. There was some sounds in the distance but I don’t think they were gunshots. I had to wait her out and try to encourage her to move on. It took a while before she took a few good steps and then she got focused on a few blades of grass. I thought she might be eating them because she does like to eat grass but she wasn’t. She was really giving those blades of grass a good sniff for a long time. Also, on the first leg she didn’t eat any of the food drops which is odd for her. She started eating them when we got to the 2nd leg. She was still distracted on the 2nd leg but started improving. Second half of track she was more focused on the track and did some nice turns with the last turn being her best. She did drink water at the end of the track and even more back at the car. She nosed the ending article but ...
Read more