Vivi & Carolyn

I have been tracking but my home internet service was spotty last week. Joys of living out in the country I guess. Caught a flu bug this week, but recovered enough to get back out Saturday afternoon and today. Both tracks were at my school and aged about 40 minutes.   Saturday's track was a 3 turn track with food every 10. I scuffed 5 steps at the start and right after the turn. I put an article at start and finish and midway on the 2nd leg. Ground was saturated from all the rain but otherwise a nice day. A few distractions for Vivi - a family of 4 playing tennis and they had their dog. Vivi was also very interested in the birds that were in the trees near the end of the first leg and on 2nd leg. She loves birds. I think she may think she is one. Had to wait her out on the distractions, but she eventually got back to tracking.  Sunday's track was a 4 turn track with same pattern as above. Articles at start and finish and then midway on 3rd leg. Absolutely no one around as...

Cold and very windy. Ground saturated from all this rain lately. Food drop every 5 steps and scuff 10 steps after I make the turn. Track #1 at Watkins Annex - 3 turns (acute) with articles laid midway on first 3 legs and an article at the end. Somewhat distracted right after the start due to seeing a dog being walked on the path. But she did get back to tracking faster than I thought she would. 2nd turn/3rd leg was challenging, I think due to tracking into a very strong wind. She nosed each article, but still have to tell her down. I forgot to mention that one of my articles was a wallet and others were gloves. Just thought I would change it up a bit and she seemed to like the wallet. Track #2 at Midlothian HS - 2 right turns (acute) with article at the end. This was supposed to be a quick, motivational track just before sunset. Started out fine, but just about the time we got to 2nd turn several people came out of the high school and cars started speeding away out of the parking lot...

We got done at the agility trial much sooner than I expected so we stopped by the Watkins Annex to do two one-turn tracks on our way home. I used the chicken I had leftover from the trial and only did a food drop every 10 steps, except I dropped at 5th step right after turn. Unfortunately no video because I didn't bring camera since I didn't think there would be time for tracking today. She did well and I think doing less frequent food drops actually might have kept her mind more on tracking. Her turns were good! Being on this playing field with some markings helped to tell me exactly where the turns were. You can tell when she loses the scent at the turn because she sort of looks a little frantic like "where did it go?" moving all around until she zeroes in on it.

Happy New Year! Vivi and I went tracking at the Mashburn's place in the afternoon. We did 2 tracks with one turn each. The first leg of each track was about 100 yards and 2nd leg was about 50 yards. First track had a 45 degree left turn and 2nd had a 45 degree right turn. I used my usual stride and did a food drop every 5th step except on the turns. When I made the turn, I did 10 scuffs. Track #1 - Left turn Got a good start. I thought she did a good job keeping her head down. On that first leg she did check a couple things to side of track but came back to the track. She picked up the left turn pretty easily and went to the article. Still have to tell her to down at the article. Track #2 - Right turn A slower track as she seemed to stop at most every food drop for a good portion of the first leg. She went a little past turn, but you could tell she lost the scent and then came back. At end she veered left of article but then came back to it. Had to tell her to down. Af...