Urban Tracking (42)

I asked Nadine to lay a fairly simple track, with just a few narrow crossings. I thought Gimme was due for an easy motivational track after all the hard work she's done lately. When I got there I laid a track for Cricket, which we ran right away. I should have run Gimme first, but since I saw Nadine coming back as we got there, it didn't seem like the track would be very old.

The track started out well. As we crossed an intersection of paved paths, a woman came at us with her dog. I started moving us out of range and naturally the idiot owner is telling me her dog is friendly and ignoring what I'm telling her, whilst turning to come straight toward us. They got far too close for comfort. It really messed with Gimme and it was hard to get her back into tracking mode. Fortunately Nadine knew exactly where the track was and when Gimme was ready, we were able to guide her to a known spot for a restart. The next article was about 50 yards, so she got rewarded amply for finding it - a good reward for restarting despite the idiot owner and the dog-intruder.

From there we crossed another paved path and headed out into a large open field. Gimme got another article while we were still close to the trees. As we moved out into the middle of the field the grass was very dry and Gimme missed the turn. She repeatedly tried to lead me to the right, the exact opposite of where the track was. We did a spiral search and Gimme wasn't having any success finding the track, even when we were crossing over a place we'd been and where she'd seemed to be certain. By this time the track was nearly 2 hours old and it was at least 80º. Nadine didn't make a map, so she wasn't certain where the corner was and we never did find the corner (or the golf tee marker). I "organized" Gimme's search until she got into a shady area under a group of trees where Nadine knew the track passed through. Gimme was able to pick up the track there and follow it through to the end with two more articles as reward points.

This certainly wasn't the easy track I wanted. Since Gimme is in false pregnancy she is not as focused as usual, is easily frustrated and inclined to give up and ask me for help. Fortunately there were lots of articles, so with subtle helps from me she was able to find them and be rewarded for her efforts.

Clearly Nadine and I both need to get back to drawing maps.