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 working so hard to manage the track that she thought "articles-schmarticles" let's get through this.

Takeaways: She can work effectively on non-veg surfaces; she was nose-down, plenty of pressure on the lead for long stretches; but

    1. We both need a lot more work on non-vegetated turns, especially on blind tracks. I need to get my wife Susan out there to put in blind tracks. She's not a fan of fields, but I don't think she'll mind a high school  or business park. It's not that she can't do concrete or asphalt; that has been learned. But she is a long way from reliable.

    2. If she shows any further problem with  articles, we're going to have to go back to review articles. Including  SMALL ones.

Millie - Betty laid a short, easy track for Millie; she managed the first 5 yards, stopped to poop, and at that point lost track of what she was doing. We kept trying to put her back on the track, and she kept losing it. She was thirsty. Halfway through the second leg she almost drained a 20 ounce bottle; it's usually a struggle to get her to drink at all.

    To be fair, she has never had to work these particular conditions before; we are fortunate enough to have access to many nice fields, so we have little experience with semi-contaminated schoolyard tracks. But this clearly is experience she needs to gain.

    On the positive side when she did pick up the track she was clearly working to stay with it. She did ok on the last leg, only to find that the finishing article had been nicked.

    Right now, I want to get her back out on a track that will build her confidence again. I'm not overly worried about one bad outing, but I'd like to see something a bit more positive before we head out for a trial next weekend.

    Before we start a track:

        I need to make a serious effort to get her to poop.

       She  has to have a lot of water. As much as she wants.