Gimme struggled with the first one, she seemed to know which way it went, but wouldn't commit. She finally did and after we got to her reward glove Nadine and I talked about it. I said I didn't think what I was doing was "realistic", since in a real test I wouldn't stubbornly face away from the right direction, instead I'd treat it as a search circle. So for legs 2 and 3, I did it as a search circle and Gimme did better.
At leg 3 I noticed Gimme seemed to find/know the direction, but still didn't go down the leg until I happened to say "track on", our tracking cue. When she's searching, I say "search for it". I noticed she tended to stall a bit on the second time around, so for leg 4 I cued "search for it", while she circled around me twice searching, and then I cued "track on" and she went right down the track. We'll do this plan a few more times until Gimme and I gel on our system. At least it seems we have a good plan.
For Cricket I laid out the same basic track as she'd had for the test, but with a shorter fourth leg, so the fifth leg and outgoing tracklayer path would be closer to the corner. As it turned out the wind was conveniently in the same direction as on trial day and pretty strong. We aged it about 30 minutes and then let her run it. As we approached the startline we could see a group of people and two large loose dogs playing on the field where the track was laid, basically all over legs 2 and 3. Amazingly Cricket aced this track. She spent a little time on the second corner, but then made the turn. My impression was she was trying to find where the turn was, sorting my path out from all the dog and people contamination. She didn't seem to be challenged by my outgoing path.Good job for both girls.
No comments:
Post a Comment