Tracking with the PEEBs

 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...

Millie and Articles, March 4 Started late in the afternoon--I had to buy an SD card for the camera. In consequence a lot of the area we were working in was in shade, but we can pretty much see what is going on. Millie thinks this game is a riot. She starts barking and dancing around whenever she hears me making preparations.  At first she just stood trying to paw the article open to get at the kielbasi. But after I once gave her a signal and a gentle command to go down, the penny dropped. Each time she came to an article after that she did a down, and after a few more she seemed to understand that she was to remain there until I picked up the article and gave her the reward. The only problem here is my timing--I'm getting better, but occasionally I found myself clicking just after  she broke the down.