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 exercises--she is a bit too easily fooled (but then again, so am I).

(There was a video of this track, but for most of the time we were too far from the camera and appear just as a couple of dots. Not worth uploading.)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
 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...
Read more
Image
 January 14, 2025 Millie in Class Tuesday. Judi asked me to post this one. This one actually precedes the one for 1/16, but I had problems downloading the video from my phone (I hate Apple!). No commentary necessary, except for Judi's comments. A lot to absorb.
Read more
Image
Millie -- Obstacles Practice AM, Article Game PM Two different sessions with Millie today, since the weather was beautiful. Morning--5-turn (4 open, 1 90°), 275 yard track with changes of cover and two road crossings. Sunny, 56°, calm. Low humidity. Food drops every 30 yards or so, and high-value food drops after negotiating challenges.      The start and most of the first leg were mediocre--I thought that distractibility was going to be a problem all along today--she was sniffing hard at everything but the track, and she seemed to lose it for a bit after the transition from medium to short grass. But she made the first turn ok, and about a quarter of the way down the second leg she started working the track nicely. She had to work a bit on the first road crossing, but made got to the far side about 2 feet wide left. She made a nice transition from medium grass to the rough stuff with no hesitation, and negotiated the second turn and the long third leg through the brush w...
Read more