12-20-23

 Crump Park. 26degrees, no wind, sunny, short, frosty grass. Track laid @ 8:05 & aged 90 minutes

This was a TD-type track. First leg 125yd to right turn. Second leg 100 yd, food @ 50, to left turn. Third leg 50 yd to right turn. Fourth leg 50yd to open right turn. Fifth leg 130yd, article @30, food @40, between 2 cedar trees ~5 ft apart @70, food @ 80, left turn @130. Sixth leg 90yd to end article.

While track was aging, went for a walk down power line path, where we found a groundhog hole! Seren checked it out, but we will come back & lay a track near it soon. Then we sat in the car a while to warm up.

While I was harnessing Seren up after track had aged, a man came off the field where our track was with his Golden & a tennis ball Chuck-it. They definitely crossed our 1st leg at least twice & I don’t know where else they had been. I asked him if his dog had picked up anything on the field that wasn’t his, & he said no. A good trainer probably would have bagged it & gone home or somewhere else to start over, but I wasn’t psychologically prepared to waste all the time that had already gone into this, or, more significantly, tell Jim why we had to start over, so we continued on to the start flag. 

Good article indication & start. When we got to the area where I knew the track was contaminated, Seren circled some, checked side to side a fair bit, but generally trended in the right direction. I didn’t say anything, just stood still when she was off-track & took a step forward when she went the right way. There were 2 areas, each maybe 20 feet wide, on the 1st leg where this occurred. Turn was good, no issues on 2nd leg. Similar ‘confusion’ type behavior at one spot on third leg, handled the same way. I guess man & Golden played there as well. Fourth leg fine. On fifth leg, a man (w/o a dog) walked across track about 50 yds ahead of us. Seren payed no attention to him or his ‘cross track’. Also had no issues with going between the cedar trees. Last leg fine. All turns and article indications were good.

While not exactly what I had planned for today, I was pretty proud of how Seren handled the situation. We have probably been here 6 times this fall, & this was the 1st time I have seen ANYBODY else on this field. Not what I expected on a below-freezing weekday morning🤷

Next session I’m aiming for something easy - 2-3 turns, ~30min. old


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