Tracking with the PEEBs

  Brigid 11/15 Class Relatively short (≅100-≅50yard), one-turn track; food every 10 yards. Scuff out of corner. Sunny, low 60s, light breeze, rh 42%. Fairly dry medium length field grass. I was very pleased with the way she worked the first leg. Good work at corner, although I started to follow a bit too early before she showed real commitment. For the most part a good second leg, although she was seriously distracted by something to the left halfway down the leg and needed to be restrained. Finished the rest of the leg well, although she missed the article completely the first time past it. Aside from the distraction on the second leg, she worked the track well. We have to work on article recognition as well as indication. Did well on short, straight-line track on soybean stubble. Brigid 11/17 Starts:  Four one-turn start tracks (30, 60, 90, 120 min old.) Each 75x40 yards. Sunny, 47°-53°, gentle (force 3) breeze, rh 24%. Short, groomed grass, dry. First and second tracks (30 ...

Thursday, November 13, 2025 Millie. Six-turn stairstep, 350 yards, articles on every other leg, food drops 15 yards past corners, and in middle of non-article legs. 45 minutes old. Laid by a third party--I knew where the corners were, but owing to the rolling terrain not the direction of the next leg. Medium-cut field grass. Sunny, high 50s, gentle breeze, rh 30%. Goals 1. to give her an easy confidence building track after difficulties on Tuesday; 2. to give her more work on corners; 3. to work further on isolating loss-of-scent behavior. Good start and first leg; easily negotiated the first two corners. At the third corner she showed loss of scent, but convinced me that the track went in a different direction that the actual track. Did well on all the other corners. What I liked--clear reaction to loss of scent when she got to each corner; noticeable and consistent behavior; stuck very closely to track with little distraction. What needs work--she still takes corners very widely, com...

New Season for Millie and Brigid November 11 -- Millie Class. Three starts, two with blind turns. Cover close-cut soybeans. Sunny. Cold (upper 30s-low 40s), strong breeze, low humidity. First track (≅1 hour?). Millie found the first leg with minimal effort at the start, and stuck to the track reasonably well. At the corner, however, both of us fell into confusion. She did register loss of scent more or less at the right place, but then had great difficulty finding the second leg--we both struggled (my handling hurt more than helped her through the problem), and we could only get back with assistance. Even after being put back on the track we had a hard time staying with the second leg. In consequence, the two remaining tracks were double-laid with considerably more food drops. Second Track  (again ≅1 hour after being relaid). A good start and first leg again. This time she found the second leg after going some distance through the corner, but showed discernable loss-of-scent behav...

 Two new article tracks, one from Thursday and one from today. 3/20. Slightly sketchy start, but stuck to the track nicely throughout the session. Did have to work a bit at the one corner, but found the correct direction. As an article track, we have a long way to go--she did find each and every article, but only twice, later in the track, did she give me a good automatic down. Her mind was clearly on getting at the food in the article. My timing is still off as well--it's more like two or three seconds between her starting to nose the article an me saying "Down".  3/25 (starts around 10:13). ≅300 yards, 1 turn. Good start and work on the track all the way through, although once or twice she had some difficulty recognizing the article when it was among debris or in the only long grass on the track. This time I had one piece of food in each article: if she gave me a down only after the command and gesture, she only got the one piece of food. If she gave me an automatic dow...

 March 11-16 I've combined several tracks into this long blog. The first was the long article track that Mary Ann planned and Susan K laid for us. She is slowly learning. She could have done better, but she is picking it up as we go along (see below.) Unfortunately the GoPro cannot do a narrower angle than this, so it is always at long-distance, and the lighting is not great. But I wanted Judi to see what happened on Tuesday. Second Segment is something different.(14:53) I know that we did obstacles recently and so we are out of rotation, but I wanted to give her a bit more work in woods and heavy cover before ticks, and especially copperheads, get to be a problem. Start her in heavy cover, transition to manicured grass, and into medium length field grass before turn. Nice loss of scent and turn on first corner, She handled the challenges of the second leg well, and, after a bit of searching, made the turn (open right). Third and fourth turns were open as well, owing to the terrain...

Combined Post--March 6&7 March 6, 2025 Millie Starts. Four short start tracks, each roughly 125 yards (60-75 first leg, 50-60 second leg), laid exactly to the pattern of scuffs and food drops shown in the exercises, except that the last and oldest track was double-laid. Partly-cloudy, 53°, moderate to fresh breeze. Humidity ≈40%.  I changed the orientation of the tracks from what I have been doing, to see if she was doing things from habit. Odd-numbered tracks started in the short direction of the field, while even-numbered tracks started along the long axis. I'm not going to go into a detailed play-by-play of each track, but will make a few general observations. Starts on 1, 3, and 4 were pretty convincing. I was especially encouraged that the longer tracks created little difficulty at the start. Track 2 gave her some trouble. The area where we were working was badly rutted, and that seemed to give her some temporary trouble, but she recovered. She is having trouble making tra...