Urban Tracking (49)

On Thursday Nadine and I met at Auburn Cinema for tracking. We saw there was a landscaping crew doing lots of work on the premises, we just had no clue how it would affect our tracks.

I told Nadine I wanted a fairly simple track, with lots of articles. She wanted to see how Gimme would do with tracking up stairs (never done before) and turns against the building (done once before). To keep it simpler, we only aged the track 20 minutes. The weather was fairly cool and the ground/pavement lightly damp.

Gimme had a real challenge with the stairs. Then I noticed this little physical thing when she needs to poop. So I broke off the track and took her over to grass to take care of business, which she did very quickly.

When we returned to the track, I restarted her in a spot where Nadine knew the track went and after a small amount of investigation she went right up the stairs. She overshot the turn right at the top of the stairs, but then was able to find it and get going, tracking right along the railing (row of dots).

This is where it got interesting. As we were headed to the first article, a little bucket loader came and started going back and forth over the track in the grass, covering articles 2 and 3 with new beauty bark. Gimme found her first article and then we had to wait until he was out of the way enough for us to move through the area. I didn't know about the second article, so took Gimme to where the leg going to article 3 was crossing the grass. Even though the bucket loader had trampled the track here at least twice, Gimme was able to follow the track to the wall and then was stymied by the beauty bark. Given how strong the smell was to me, I can appreciate how challenging it was for her.

I could see the purple eyeglass case through the bark, so I gave it a little poke with my finger. Gimme immediately got her nose in there, found the article and indicated it, by scratching at it with her foot and pulling it out onto the grass. 

From there we made our turn, down the sidewalk and across the asphalt to the island. There we discovered the beauty bark guy had also covered the final article. Gimme snooped around the spot and then dug down and pulled out her final glove. How can you not love her talent and perseverance?

Since this track had been more than I wanted for her with the interruptions, after we did Cricket's track, Nadine laid another simple track for Gimme. It was aged about 10 minutes.

The mostly straight track started in the parking lot with a start sock, passed between two islands, crossed the asphalt road, a sidewalk, and onto 15 yards of grass. Halfway across the grass was a plastic spoon. Gimme missed this article, so I had to help her discover it. From there the track continued straight across the grass, over fresh beauty bark making a small dog-leg around a bush, and onto the asphalt. After 15 yards she came upon a piece of foam shoe insert. Then 15 yards to a plastic tube and another 15 yards to the final half-glove. The whole track was about 90 yards long.

Gimme thought this was the greatest way to get a bunch of treats. We left her wanting more - exactly what I wanted.

We are waiting to hear if our tracking pal Sugar has delivered puppies. We thought they might come last night, but not. I expect Nadine won't want to track this Thursday, but we are ready if she decides to. Cross your fingers for lots of healthy happy babies. Nadine is expecting 6 puppies and has reservations for 15.

I just wanna smell puppy breath.