Seren tracking

 Dylan’s tracking class at Holly Ridge Dylan had an article track, laid by Anne. Age 40 min. Raining, no wind. He laid down on his own for 50% of the articles. Later he did an abbreviated stairstep, same tracklayer & conditions. Did very well, I thought. 

 Pole Green Park Having another try at change of cover from short to tall grass for Seren. Did a better job of scouting & found tall grass that was more manageable than the last time I tried this here. Track age 3 hours, 2 turns. Both turns scuffed in & out. No food in start article, was food in intermediate & end ones. Coming out of tall grass crossed dirt road that had a little human traffic, including dog walker immediately after track was laid. From road went a few yards into woods. Road heavily fooded. I was pretty happy with this. She hesitated going into the tall grass & then found a mouse a little ways in - don’t know why she’s so into crittering lately, Dylan must have taught her. No issues with turns or crossing road into woods. Articles good. I’ll do some more cover transitions in the coming month & gradually increase age, maybe 3 hrs 30-45 min. next time. Before that, tho, I want to do some crosstracks & a stream crossing video  https://yout...

 Judi’s field Seren had a 3 turn track, 2 intermediate articles (1st with food). Designed for the only challenge to be age, which was 5 hours. After looking at the video, I’m not as disappointed as I felt in real time. She had a lovely start & 1st turn. There were some wobbles on the 1st leg, I assume checking side scents. Her 2nd turn looked like it was going well until she got distracted by the groundhog hole (which of course I didn’t see when laying the track) & then had trouble getting back on track. Major part of this snag was my poor handling - I was vague on line-ups as the light had changed dramatically (turn was flagged but over the hill), I was too slow to throw out the start article & call it. But, when I took the line off the harness so we could just go collect articles, she seemed eager to get back into it. So when we got to the article on 3rd leg & she indicated it, I hooked the harness back up & she finished strongly. Also, I should have offered w...

 Poor Farm Park Seren had a short, easy, 2 turn track, age 2 hr 45 min. Intermediate article (metal) on 2nd leg. She did very well. https://youtu.be/UQ-gVYUKQQY ?feature=shared Dylan passed his certification track today. No map or video

 Pole Green Park Seren had a short 3 turn track incorporating tall weeds & brush - no briars, but unanticipated fallen vines & weeds difficult to walk in so used lots of food & made track shorter than planned. Planned Age 2 hrs 45min. About an hour before time to run track, the cross country kids showed up & began a series of  20-30 kids running down 1st leg & crossing 4th. After I observed that they intended to do this multiple times I decided the combination of very challenging cover & severe human contamination, after doing a fairly difficult track last time out, had too high a potential of being severely demotivating & gave up on this track. Took Seren with me on lead (no harness) to pick up flags & articles, to give her something to do & do see how she handled the tall cover. It was interesting- she indicated start article, but made no attempt to track on 1st leg. Once into the tall grass, she followed the track & indicated the arti...

 Dorey Park. Dylan only today. Endurance track with one turn. Intermediate article ~2/3 of the way down 1st leg. Food drops every 50-100 steps. Age 1 hour 15 min. He did well, no problem with the distance. Downed on his own for all but start article. Mildly distracted by blown over trash can, got right back to work. Did lift his leg on fence - my bad, I thought those type of enticements were far enough off the track so I didn’t do any extra enhancement there. Maybe he was feeling extra studly today. Nice start & turn. I was interested to observe the effect the relatively mild wind had on him. Going into the wind, he keeps his head pretty high (leg 1) where in a crosswind he has nose to ground but tends to scallop off the track & back by a foot or two (leg 2). I need to try to remember to pay attention to this in the future with him & other dogs. https://youtu.be/2JQA2y2r30o?feature=shared