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 distance beyond the corner before registering loss-of-scent, and in consequence was wide through the first twenty yards of the third leg, and again missed an article. The track continued across a 35 yard section of brick esplanade in front of the library, the first significant stretch of non-vegetated track. There she meandered a bit, but not to a distressing extent, and never wandered too far from the track.  The leg then continued across an area of mixed grass, mulch and hard-packed dirt, none of which gave her any trouble, in spite of lots of clear contamination. Finally found an article!  The last corner was on a sidewalk, which led down some steps, across a sidewalk and across an asphalt road. Loss-of-scent came slowly, but after making a full circle around the grass beyond the sidewalk and back around, she picked up the track again. The road crossing was not great, but only because she lost track for a moment when I had to hold her back because of on-coming traffic. What remained of the last leg on lawn beyond was challenging--not only was it perhaps the most contaminated area, but there was a constant flow of students along surrounding sidewalks and across her path. Nonetheless she found the last article.