Seren tracking

 Pole Green Park Seren had a track designed to practice woods entries. My initial turn into the woods turned out to be too briery, so I had to cut off 1st 2 legs & make a new start. (track laying error) This was kind of a mess from the get-go. Really bad start, which I’m going to blame on my bad tracklaying. Another walker came right down the track on the left side of the woods. Seren tried to make the 1st turn way too early, but then turned at the correct place well. As we were exiting the woods, we were greeted by a loose dog. When I heard an owner’s voice, I yelled for her to get her dog, which she did.  Second turn sloppy, missed 3rd entirely. Very possible I missed turn indication as my head was not in the game at that point. Ending was nice. We’ll do this again, but not real soon video: https://youtu.be/HK-8EjBCogM?feature=shared   Dylan had a 2 turn track for me to work on line handling & to gradually accustom him to work further from me at times. He did mu...

  The main objective for today was for me to practice line handling, using a short line up to a turn, then letting line all the way out when dog turned & started down new leg, then hurry to catch up to 10’ back again. Each dog had a 2 turn track, Seren’s aged about 1 hour, Dylan’s about 30 min. Seren’s track had multiple unplanned crosstracks (cross country team practicing), which distracted her significantly. I think I did ok with her turns. Dylan appeared disconcerted about being that far down the line as he has rarely worked more than 10’ out. I think it was too much all at once & I need to work up to a longer line gradually. Not the finest hour for any of us, but now I have even more things to work on. Seren’s track & video: https://youtu.be/Oe9BVHvgxs0?feature=shared Dylan’s track & video: https://youtu.be/ZaD7kxrse-A?feature=shared

 Taylor Park Seren did 4 start tracks, aged 1, 2, 3, & 4 hours. I thought she did quite well. On tracks 1 & 2 there was a crosstrack visible in the dew - not human, rabbit maybe - that she was very interested in. Didn’t see it when I was laying the tracks or I would have made getting past it more rewarding, but she got through it. Good starts & articles. 4 hours did not appear to be a problem. Photo is of the field where tracks were. Videos: #1  https://youtu.be/YoHgqXcwZGc?feature=shared 2# https://youtu.be/MRhKze6nCqQ?feature=shared 3# https://youtu.be/ANqdFgXNiqA?feature=shared #4  https://youtu.be/y5Amo9n1kFw?feature=shared Dylan had a 2 turn track with a ‘going through a gap in the treeline’ challenge on the 2nd leg. Scuffed & put down lots of food through the gap.  Age = 1hr. Nice start & articles. Today he was distracted by the barking at the shelter/dog park, +/- rabbit pellets?. He missed (or perhaps just ignored) a lot of the food on the...

 Seren had 2 short, fresh woods entry tracks & did a nice job with them. Will continue to do similar exercises, with increasing age & difficulty. video #1 https://youtu.be/nkBN8oqS1gc?feature=shared video #2   https://youtu.be/4AjEQkRUqGE?feature=shared Dylan had a 2 turn track in knee high grass with lots of food, scuffed start & turns, aged 30min. This was meant to be easy, fun, motivational, but didn’t quite work out that way. Silly me thought I could remember the track for 1/2 hour, so didn’t take my map with me. I thought leg 1 went in a direction 90degrees  from where it actually went, & it took a while for Dylan to convince me otherwise. Nevertheless he persisted & I’m very proud of him for that! Then at 1st turn, he had sudden pain in right rear - thorn, bug sing or bite???. He was being a jerk about letting me look at it, so I decided to quit, & I was too upset to remember to throw down start article. But, less than halfway back to start, ...

 Hanover Courthouse Seren did a 2 turn track which included a short woods obstacle. Leather article just as exiting woods. Although she needed a reminder to down at the article, she had a nice start on a well-aged track. Clearly indicated where the turn into the woods was (would it have been as clear if I didn’t know thats where it was?) but needed encouragement to go in there. Once into the woods, she did great & the rest was quite nice. We need more practice on woods entries. r rvideo    https://youtu.be/UbUU9MXhzVs?feature=shared Dylan had 4 starts, 2 with right turns & 2 with left. Ages 30, 60, 90, & 120 minutes. Satellite view just to show location. A little slow to start on #1. Went 3’ beyond turn on #1 before I saw LOS, I backed up 1-2 steps & he picked up turn just fine. Next 3 much better. Needed verbal cue for very last article, rest good videos: #1 # https://youtu.be/m5VDlt_fvAI?feature=shared      #2 https://youtu.be/N4_AomBS4z8?...

 Pole Green park. Seren did an endurance track today, ~1100 yards, 3 intermediate articles, food every 20 steps until near the end when I was running out of food & had to cut back to every 30. One hour old. Crossed a paved & a dirt road. Two unplanned crosstracks - dogwalker between the paved & dirt road somewhere just as we were starting (may have thought about following but didn’t), woman with baby carriage somewhere on one of the soccer fields while we were running (ignored). After the dirt road, just as we got to the green hat article another dogwalker appeared from the left. Seren wagged her tail, indicated her article, & carried on. That would have been more of a challenge for Dylan🙂. She also responded well to ‘leave it’ when trying to eat some sort of poop & to ‘no’ when she tried to roll in it. Excellent start & articles, good attitude throughout, showed no sign of getting tired or bored, did not want water at the end.  I was very happy with t...

 Pole Green Park Plan was to take advantage of cool weather & have each dog do a little more age than they had done recently. Seren had a 4 turn track with the 3rd turn being a hangman. Her start wasn’t very good & she was easily distracted. Articles good, turns so-so video:  https://youtu.be/vEsIg3IApBk?feature=shared Dylan had 3 turns. There was more traffic on the road than I have seen before, & he was very interested in the vehicles, distracted in general. video:  https://youtu.be/m6N3iMAZGCQ?feature=shared Next session will do younger tracks with lots of food drops, see if I can keep those heads down

 Hanover Courthouse Seren’s track was 90 min old. She had a 2 turn track that went through the water retention hole behind the post office - there was no water in it other than the rain that was falling. She had no difficulty with that. video:     https://youtu.be/lsKt57f72y4?feature=shared Dylan had a blind track, laid by Valerie, that was 30 min old. There were multiple leg-lifting opportunities, & we still need to work on that. I’m not as good at reading his LOS as I am at seeing when he re-finds the track. Seems like the freeze dried beef heart creates a large scent pool. I need more blind tracks video: https://youtu.be/OB2wdkWax3A?feature=shared

 Taylor Park Seren did a classic stairstep track. While she wasn’t as precise as on a 30 min. track, I thought she did well. She had 1 episode of what looked like a ‘senior moment’ - staring off into space for no reason I could tell - but she got back to work as soon as I broke the trance. Articles good. I felt like I was reading LOS well, but hard to be sure of that when you know where the track goes. link to video:   https://youtu.be/slDDgNHeDAY?feature=shared Dylan had a 4 turn track, crossing bluestone walkway on 2nd leg. 3rd turn was acute. He had no problems with walkway today, handled acute turn fine. I remembered to tell him ‘good’ for turning left. I am seeing a pattern with distractions, tho. He seems fine with ongoing activity around us, but if something new appears on the scene, he looses focus for a minute. That happened at the start today with a dog walker arriving as we got going. They were not particularly close, but Dylan felt the need to look at them. Got bac...