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.
I think with the strong wind it probably made since to stick with the higher reinforcement. As you progress, you can use 'known turns' as an opportunity to start a catalog of her tracking behaviors that you want to learn to read better. If she shows LOS at the turns, then you will have no choice but to rely on her behavioral cues. The trick will be to do this enough to have a memory of what they are :). If you can get a chest mount for your phone so that you can film this I highly recommend it.
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...
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 ...
I think with the strong wind it probably made since to stick with the higher reinforcement. As you progress, you can use 'known turns' as an opportunity to start a catalog of her tracking behaviors that you want to learn to read better. If she shows LOS at the turns, then you will have no choice but to rely on her behavioral cues. The trick will be to do this enough to have a memory of what they are :). If you can get a chest mount for your phone so that you can film this I highly recommend it.
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