October 17 Brigid - New dog (Ch Goose Creek Brigid O'Shaughnessy At Brownstone). A very bright girl, but never been tracking before. For the past three days running I have emulated the work Judi gave the newbies a couple of weeks ago. Absolutely clueless on the first track of the first day, but by the third track that day she was snuffling and going with the track, as she has done on the subsequent days. Nice start. Millie - After a nine-day layoff after Rochester I wanted to just introduce Millie to some of the wrinkles of a TDX track, so I laid one with a short road crossing and lots of weird changes of cover. But when we got to the track half of it had just been mowed over. It's good to give a dog challenges, but asking a dog to deal with that is just setting her up to fail. Can't work tomorrow, so we'll wait until Thursday.
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October 15 Ilsa - Hard-surface work. ≅300 yards, 4 turns. 2:15 old. First leg (50 yards) and first turn on grass; remainder of track on either asphalt or concrete. Sunny, 59 degrees. Moderate Breeze (which made things really challenging). Humidity 56% [Note: Throughout this journal I have been using terms like Calm/Light Air/Light Breeze/Gentle Breeze to describe the wind. These are all pulled from the Beaufort Scale, which describes wind conditions in what I consider meaningful units from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane). I can't tell the difference between a 10 mph wind and a 11 mph wind, but I can tell the difference between a Gentle Breeze (Force 3, 8-12 mph) and a Moderate Breeze (Force 4, 13-17 mph)] Blind track. A couple of weeks ago she ran her first blind track with VST-like challenges, and I realized then that her indications are not nearly as clear and easy to read as they are on vegetated surfaces. The purpose of today's track was to some extent to practice a blind tra...
October 12 Ilsa - The purpose of today's track was to give her experience on heavily contaminated campus lawns at close to full age. She has worked well on moderately to heavily contaminated lawns before, but usually at about 1 1/2 hours. Today's track was aged 2:55; between when I laid it and when we ran it there had been two changes of class, and it ran through areas that large numbers of students have to cross during the change-over. 400 yards, 3 turns, 4 articles. She started strongly, and ran the first leg cleanly. Found the first corner easily, and went straight into the second leg, which ran between two closely-spaced buildings. But she had taken the turn a bit wide, and by the time she got dead on the track she had missed an article not too far beyond the turn. Then the track continued straight beyond the buildings, across a very heavily trafficked area. Aside from stopping to stare at a couple of passing students, she stuck with it very nicely. Again went some...
Sunday, October 8 Dog Obedience Training Club of Rochester NY Tracking Trial. Millie drew the first TD track, which was a bit of luck. There were already steady winds in the mid-teens, with gusts well into the twenties, but that was only going to get much worse as the day went on. The first, third and fifth legs were cross-wind; the second and fourth were downwind. She took off on the first leg (125 yards) very smartly, and proceeded two-thirds of the way down it with determination. Then, just to the left of the track, we both spotted a groundhog hole, one of those broad ones. She stopped, sniffed and, defying a "leave it", dropped down and rolled over in it. Well, that's not a bit deal, except that it took at least three minutes, perhaps as much as five, for her to regain the track. What saved her was that she was clearly working, so we didn't get the whistle. Finally she got it back, and proceeded to track with determination for the rest of the track, finding an...
October 4 Millie - Two short, one-turn start tracks, aged 30 and 60 minutes, to give her a last bit of practice before a trial in four days. Started the first track a bit wide but parallel, but quickly got back on it. Clean to and through the first corner, and through the second leg right to the article Circled a trifle at the start of the 60 minute track, but then got on it. Soon circled again to make sure she had it, but then got right back on it and tracked confidently for both legs and the corner. Showed loss-of-scent behavior about 8 feet beyond the corner, but immediately circled 90 degrees and found the last leg with ease. https://youtu.be/gXK7OwxUlt4
October 3 Millie - Short Multi-Turn track at Cool Water. Aged ≅ 30 min. Very strong and confident start, and did well on first leg; she negotiated long-short-long transition with no problem. We missed the first corner--she showed signs of loss-of-scent, but then she went forward, and I followed her (which I shouldn't have done unless I was sure that she was sure. I had to bring her back quite some distance on instructions from the tracklayer, but she did find the second leg on her own when we got to it. Again, went down the second leg with confidence, but stopped at the corner--there was an article at the turn. (Expect the unexpected!) It took a lot to get her restarted again--I had to give her a bit of help. She did the rest of the track very nicely, sticking to the track and negotiating all subsequent turns, including making the right choice when the track turned right and a deer track turned left. I need to incorporate the unexpected and tricky into her rotation of ...
October 1 Well, we've had better days, but we've learned a lot. Thank you very much, Betty, for inviting us out to Richmond and putting in these tracks for us. Both tracks were at a local public school. Ilsa - 334 yard VST-like track; mixed veg & non-veg. 5 turns aged 1:50. Her first VST practice laid by someone besides me.Start on grass, then concrete/grass/asphalt. Eager start on grass, good first turn. It was good to see her clearly in tracking mode for much of the track, including much of the nv sections. But, she started missing turns from the second corner on; she did stay with it as best she could (I could almost smell her little brain smoking), but once she first lost the track she had trouble regaining it. Got it back a couple of time, but lost it again on a cgrass-curb-asphalt transition, with which she has usually had little trouble. Perhaps the worst part was was that she missed all articles. She is usually very good at that, and I think she was workin...