TD/TDX seminar, Saturday

I've been looking forward to this seminar for many months.  We have another seminar on urban tracking in late July.

Although we've been doing some crosstracks, I wanted to take advantage of having strangers lay them.  When Nadine and I have set crosstracks for Gimme, my crossings have been perpendicular to her track, so the easiest kind for success. Thus I selected an "X" over "U" track to make it a more challenging angled crosstrack. This would be her first opportunity to have a crosstrack that was so much younger than the track, an hour after the track was laid, and laid by two complete strangers.  Here is a diagram for the setup.

Our instructions were to let the dog commit to the crosstracks as much as they wanted, up to the length of the line, while remaining still on the track (completely marked - you'll see Gimme walk right over a flag) and then use the hierarchy of helping techniques to give the dog information about the right decision. These helps are:

• face in the correct direction
• restraint
• reel in and re-scent
• reel in and point to the correct track and direction
• reel in and love the track

In the critique Sil let me know I had three issues:

1. I have "happy feet" - I'm moving around too much when Gimme is working out a challenge. I know I typically move more than usual when I'm stopping Gimme as she commits in the wrong direction, to give her a softer stop on the line and I thought I was backing up to "own my spot". Sil said this wasn't what he saw.
2. On one corner Gimme started in the wrong direction and Sil said I stopped her with line pressure too soon, so she didn't get the chance to solve it on her own.  In the video I saw Gimme had started to circle and then turned back and took up the correct line.  This happened so quick I'm sure it wasn't apparent to onlookers.
3. And, I wasn't using good verbal corner communication.

- "X" over "U" track videoWe started the first leg with the wind at our backs. Gimme does a back-and-forth serpentine over about half of the first leg, kind of her usual, which settles down quickly. She's completely into her track and so, there's no overt sign she noticed the first two crosstracks. She missed her second article, turning off the track right as she gets close to it. I think I remember some tire tracks there, but I can't really see them on the video. Where Sil thought I stopped her from going in the wrong direction on a corner, it looked to me like she was starting to circle and then turned back on her own. I definitely see the tire tracks on the third leg, about 10 yards before she gets distracted and then gets tangled in the line.

Gimme is about 5 feet to the left of the track when she crosses the third crosstrack and goes about 30 feet beyond it and stops to pee. Since she doesn't immediately continue down the track, I circle her (she almost always goes clockwise), which means as she comes around again from the left, she hits the crosstrack before the real track. I let her use the whole line to investigate. When she comes back I re-scent her on the start article and then she takes off down the real track and is quickly rewarded with another article. Gimme ignores the next cross track, then inexplicably loses the track about 30 yards from the final glove. She searches and then goes to the end and I reward her by letting her clean out all the treats I have left.

She loses steam on Monday's track too.  Sil thinks it's mental fatigue.  After all, this is a lot of concentrated work.

The video quality is challenging. It would be more valuable if I commented to myself about what I'm seeing.

Maureen, one of the mentors, has concerns about my line handling. She doesn't like biothane leads because they are too "sticky" and tend to create a stuttering effect, instead of having the line slip smoothly through my hand. I like biothane precisely because it's sticky, since it doesn't require as strong of a grip to hold onto. She is concerned the stuttering may distract Gimme as she is working out some of the more subtle challenges in these advanced tracks. So I'm going to try working in gloves and see if it helps. I think I may try just one glove on my left hand, so I can still have the full sticky grip when I need it.