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.
After just two sessions of turns, it seems like left turns might be easier for her than right turns.
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...
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.
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 ...
You have an “away” dog! She is looking great. Most dogs will overshoot the turn a bit, the critical thing is that she comes back to it. Well done
ReplyDelete