3-20-25
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 field. I held line between 5&10 feet.
Dylan did fine. He did a little bit of scalloping in places, but couldn’t get too far off the track. Needed verbal cue to drop at both articles, but did it when I was at least 6 feet away. Pretty much ignored traffic & trash while tracking, & we got to practice ‘trade’ while picking up the flags
I plan to bump the age up a couple of times before decreasing the food any further
How were Seren’s articles on this track? How was her general attitude?
ReplyDeleteArticles were good. General attitude was kind of blase’
DeleteI'm caught up on your blogs Betty. I'm curious, does your proximity change her demeanor? For example, if you go back to being really close to her, does her affect change?
ReplyDeleteNot that I have noticed, but I will pay more attention to that next time out
DeleteBetty, I’m thinking your priority right now is to get her enthusiasm back. I’d try a couple of things. First, 4 SHORT one turn tracks. Run at 1,2,3,4 hours, evaluating enthusiasm. Use scuffing to augment your tracks. Goal is EASY, so you’re only changing age. All 4 laid the same way.
DeleteNext time, same pattern, use food as the variable. 1 food drop per leg on one, 2 on another. If the tracks are SHORT, just do 2 more-next one 2 food drops per leg, last one with food only for article (from you).
Finally, I’d be doing article tracks every other tracking session (perhaps alternate articles with the tracks above).
Blaise is unlikely to get to the end of a TDX track—we need her to want to solve the puzzles.
And to be clear, the first 4 ‘evaluation’ tracks have no food. So spend some time making sure she enjoys the article.
Delete