January 13, 2024

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. A little too much distraction for my ADHD dog. I tried waiting her out and backing up a bit. After a while I said her name to try to break her out of her focus on the parking lot. Worked for a brief second to get her on the last leg. Eventually when she seemed to focus back on me for a brief second, I shortened her leash to about 4 feet and took a step forward. That got her back to tracking and we finally got to the article. A track that should have taken less than 60 seconds took us like 600 seconds. I took video but my internet is working at a snail's pace. If I ever get it uploaded, I will edit this post.

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