10-3-25

 Taylor Park



Seren had a simple 4 turn track for me to work on letting out line at turns & for her to try a bit more age. Very nice start & articles. Downed shortly before 1st turn - don’t know what that was about except maybe this was a longer leg than on a lot of the tracks we’ve done recently & she thought something should happen by then?? I think that Judi was correct (imagine that!) about Seren being cued/given confidence about her turns because I have been going with her fairly quickly- hard not to on a 10’ line. Using the 40’ line & letting it out almost the whole way when she made a turn seemed to make her figure out for herself that she was correct, & she got better at it as we went along. She way overshot a couple of the turns before I saw any LOS - have to watch & see if that persists. 

Will continue to do this kind of exercise, younger track next time, & maybe some sort of obstacle challenge.

video:




Dylan also had a 4 turn track, but with a couple of heavily scuffed & fooded challenges - a board fence & a treeline. I also worked on letting out the line to 15-20 feet for a few short intervals. He 
did very well. was not bothered by the longer line or even by me dropping it to go around the fence. His lie down needs work, however, outside the article context. Did well at treeline. Missed lots of the food at both obstacles. Turns & end article were good


Comments

  1. JudiOctober 4, 2025 at 11:46 AM

    Glad you did this! FWIW, I wouldn’t let the long overshoot happen again—change something. Perhaps a stairstep…let the line run on every other leg, and on the opposite legs, stay close. On the legs where you are going to let her make the turn and go 40’….use food at the turn (one food drop per step for the first 5-10 steps of the next leg) to teach her to stay close to the track even if you’re way behind. And, be clear, there are 2 ways to do the 40’ thing—1. She’s 40’ ahead as she approaches the turn (and you have to handle what you see, as though you don’t know the turn is there). 2. Approach the turn at 10’, when she gives LOS, let her go 40’ down the leg before you follow. There’s also 3. Move off the track as you approach the turn, in the opposite direction of the turn…..and give her 40’ to find the leg.
    As far as cuing on a 10’ line….use a 40’. Stay at 10’ (mark the line). When she appears to have committed, let the line run, facing either the direction she was last tracking, or the wrong direction (left turn, you face right). Then, MOVE UP to your 10’ mark. It’s this seamless moving up and down the line that eventually makes you invisible to the dog—and that’s what you want. Once I see a possible problem developing, I do something to address it next time out. An error repeated=training. You’ve started to train the error in, which isn’t generally helpful!

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