Tracking Genius (28)

We had lovely sunny weather (mid 60's).  The grass was tall and wet when we arrived.  It dried up quite a bit by the time I tracked with Gimme.  Nadine got there before me and laid a track for Cricket, which she also ran with Skookum.  I laid 2 tracks as Sil had suggested at the last seminar, for Gimme.  Nadine ran them with Sugar after we were done.

The first 60 yard leg had a start sock and a 30 yard flag.  The second leg had article-flag-article-flag and was 80 yards.  The third leg had article-flag-article-flag, a small hill and another article at the end - 100 yards.  Then I walked along the edge of the path to where I started the second track (40 yards). I forgot to put down a start sock on the first leg of the second track, but did get in the 30 yard directional flag - 70 yards.  The second leg had article-flag-article-flag and was 80 yards, going down a very steep bank (I kinda miscalculated my turn).  The last leg had article-flag-article-flag (I drew it wrong).  It had another article and flag at the end and was 110 yards.  There are 7 yards between articles and flags on the article-flag-article-flag combo.

This was supposed to be two tracks, but true to recent experiences, Gimme could not be convinced to stop tracking between them.  So she ended up doing a 540 yard track, which was 45 minutes old.  She did a great job and was never more than 5 feet parallel to the track.  She was much tighter on her turns (or I'm getting better at seeing it), so she wasn't more than 10-12 feet past a turn.  There were a couple where she cut the corners about 10 feet from the actual corner, which Sil says is perfectly acceptable.  She nailed all her articles, even though she sometimes had to really push through the long grass to get down to them.  She really was awesome.  The only place she hesitated was the steep bank, which also had some sticker weeds.  She moved out around the weeds and then got right back on her track and drove through to the end.

On a positive note for myself - I focused on letting her pull the line out through my hands until she was 20 feet or more before taking a step.  I think I did this almost every time. 

And now we are heading out in no time for Bellingham.  We have a 3-day TDX level seminar with Sil Sanders (Saturday through Monday).  I know it will be great and I'll learn a lot.  I'd hoped to get out of town sooner so I could miss the Friday rush hour traffic through Seattle, but work ran long and I wanted to get these two blog entries done while it was all fresh in my mind.