2-21-24

 Having abandoned an ‘overshoot the turn’ track yesterday upon discovering the field was full of sandspurs (after it had already aged an hour!😡), I thought we should try again today. Went to Courthouse Park & put in a 2 turn (1st left, 2nd right) track, overshooting & doubling back to each turn. Food 20 yards after each turn. 1st leg 50 yd, 2nd 100, 3rd 40.Track laid @9:10. Sunny, 40degrees, minimal wind. Slight dew on grass.

While that track was aging I laid a 100yd straight track with food every 20 yd to run fresh, just to convince myself that Seren had not been traumatized by the sandspurs. (she hadn’t)

Also while my track was aging, a couple of folks with 3 OFF LEASH dogs arrived to play tennis ball. I asked them to move down the (huge) field a bit, explained what I was doing. The guy said sure & then proceeded to let his dogs run up to Seren, got them back with difficulty, & then move down the field, trampling all over my track (2 people, 3 dogs) rather than going across the parking lot as I had asked. More😡.

Oh well, an additional training challenge, right?- at least not painful. After this crew had moved on to the point that I didn’t think my dog would be molested, the track was 65 minutes old. Seren did well on the straightaways, but had more difficulty than in the past with the turns on this exercise. I kind of felt like after she lost scent at the turns, she was too distracted by all the extraneous fresh scent to concentrate on her track again. But we got through it.

Next time out, I will attempt to do something easy like a classic stairstep for her. Can’t wait to see what happens.

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