12-13-24

 Taylor Park. Short grass, sunny, 40degrees, 2mph wind, 60% humidity. Track laid @9:00&aged 2 hrs

This was a ‘by the book’ stairstep track. Leash generally held at ~10ft

Great start & articles. Seren overshot turn 4  - I let out line to 30’ before she showed loss of scent. She then came back on her own & found next leg easily. On last turn, she turned at the correct spot but made the turn much more acute than 90 degrees. I let out line while turning my head to watch her, then stopped her when line got past the 30’ mark. At this point she was essentially behind me. She just stood there for a few seconds. I called her back to me (I was standing on the track) & with verbal encouragement she eventually looked for & found the last leg, where she got rewarded by finding her favorite glove.

Interesting that both turns where there was a problem were going from the same direction to the same direction. Probably just coincidence, but maybe not?


Dylan’s lesson was similar to yesterday, except I left him in the car while putting in the tracks (1 at a time), & pattern was S7, W7, food, W7, S7, etc. Not seeing the track laid did not dampen his enthusiasm. With more distance between food drops he skipped fewer of them than when they were closer. He did get distracted at one point by a man pushing a baby carriage about 100yd away, but got back to work pretty quickly. 

Comments

  1. JudiDecember 13, 2024 at 3:02 PM

    Good information. I think (🤔) next time …if she overshoots, keep the line length stable and go with her until she gives you loss of scent. Keep your pace and the line tension the same…and follow as though it was straight. Standing still and playing line is actually a cue—generally I try not to stand still until I’ve seen loss of scent, so the dog drives my behavior. Direction certainly could have been an issue, we don’t get to know what they smell!

    Love that Dylan is working through distractions early in his training! And putting the same tracks in when he is left in the car for the first time is perfect planning.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

12-8-24 Article Games with Dylan

 I’m cocky enough to think that Seren’s articles are pretty good (at least at the moment). I can think of a couple of games we could have fun with, but they would involve finding appropriate spaces outside, figuring out how to set up the tripod out there, yada, yada, yada. So I took the easy way out to complete the assignment & cheated by using the dog who actually needs this exercise & used Dylan, even though he isn’t in the class. So that he can start generalizing his indication behavior,  I used 2 articles, each stuffed with food. One is the slipper that I use for his little starter tracks, the other a glove he found at the park last week. He isn’t real fluent with his verbal lie down cue yet, so I stayed pretty close to him. That worked out well as my food tossing skills are not to be bragged about either. In retrospect, I probably should have set the articles up ahead of time, as I’m not sure if the movement or the scent made him go to them. But he was definitely ...
Read more

3-20-25

Image
 Klehr Field. partly cloudy, 68 degrees, wind 12 mph & gusty, 43% humidity  Seren did a 4 turn track, each leg ~50 yd. Scuffed out of turns 1,2,&4. Food @35 on legs 2&3. Article @25 on leg 4 with food @35. Track laid @9:05 & aged 3 hrs Start & articles were fine. Overshot 1st turn by 12 steps but turned to the left & came back on her own & found 2nd leg. Same with 2nd turn, but by only 10 steps. Before the food on leg 3 got distracted by something off to the right & I had to tell her to get back to work. The food was fortuitously placed so she got rewarded for just a few steps back on the track. Cut the corner at turn 3 by ~5 ft. 4th turn was right on. I will aim for Seren’s next track to be 2.5-3 hrs old Dylan did a 4 turn track, laid @11:15& aged 20 min.  Scuffed start & out of turns. Food every 30yds. First leg paralleled chain link fence maybe 5 feet away & went between fence & goal post. There was some trash on the fiel...
Read more

2-5-25

Image
 Courthouse Park. Overcast, 40 degrees, 6mph, 60%. Track laid @8:40&aged 100min. This was a cover change with turns track. At least 1 food drop per leg, sometimes more. All turns except 5th one scuffed, & there was a fair bit of scuffing on the straightaways in the woods, too - not necessarily intentional. Numbers on map indicate my steps, which are considerably less than a yard, especially in the woods. I estimate total length 450-500 yards. We did pretty well with this one. Seren’s tracking wasn’t her best but I felt like I was reading her well so we didn’t go wrong. I recovered all my flags & clothespins🙂. Start was good. Parallelling the hedgerow was more challenging than it usually is for Seren, but she worked it out. Turn into the woods was good. Hard to say if she indicated metal article in the woods, as there was a pile of animal poop about 18” from it that she tried to roll in. So she did lie down, but… Very nice tracking in the woods. Indicated fabric article...
Read more