One thing which was a challenge was the field type. They were almost all seed grass fields, which meant strips of vegetation, with 18" strips of mud between them. It took a bit for some dogs to get used to this. Gimme picked it up fairly quickly, since she tracked in a field just like this for her TD test. For us handlers, it was challenging because of stepping over the vegetation and between them in the mud OR stepping on the vegetation and balancing, with an awkward stride length. I basically blew out my foot on the first day and then continued to tramp around on it for five miles a day, so it's still bothering me.
Saturday
Before the seminar started I talked to Sil about two issues I've noticed.
- I've noticed in our tracks when I have her searching, saying the cue "search for it", she seems to continue searching until I give her the next cue "track-on". Sil suggested I simply modify my search cuing to include instructions to track. So I did and it worked brilliantly.
- I've noticed a tendency with some challenges for her to search and then line out, either straight ahead or slightly off straight and pull really hard as if it is the track, when there was actually a turn. This is something I wanted him to watch for, acknowledging the possibility it was caused by something I'm doing or not doing correctly. Sil said he was certain it was something I was doing.
"M" over "U" crosstrack exercise video - We've done this before, so if you are a long time reader, you may recognize this diagram.
- Gimme had difficulty getting started. I had unintentionally brought our peanut butter go toob and she found it distracting (note her mugging me), so I handed it off to someone. The other issue was the scarcity of vegetation at the start, because the tracklayer got confused and laid the track backward from what Sil intended. I was doing the dreaded line circling over my head, which I never do. I helped her by following before she was committed and it worked to encourage her.
- You can see a bit of snow on the ground and it was bitterly cold. My fingers were so cold I could barely handle the line, which affected how I handled her throughout this track. You'll note Gimme doing a serpentine on her track in the beginning, which she commonly does.
- You can see in the video, which Sil commented on, how I am stopping Gimme's investigation of the cross tracks well before the end of my line. My hands were so cold I was worried about losing the line if I got closer to the end - that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. When I stopped her, she'd search in a circle and then line out on the track.
- There are four crosstracks on each long leg of the track. Gimme checked out all four on the first long leg. On the second long leg she noticed all of them, but discarded them on her own. This is a substantial improvement over how she did last June at the seminar. Then she tended to find the crosstracks more and more attractive. Sil thought it was mental fatigue. And, it took a bit of encouragement to get her to finish the tracks. This is not usual for her, thus the determination of mental fatigue.
- This time she got better as she went along, even though my handling wasn't very good. Note at 9:45 where she goes a few feet down the crosstrack and then just takes herself off it and returns to the track. You'll see this again at about 14:10. Beautiful!
- Twice I tried to talk her into "articles" which weren't. The first one was a plastic bag and she dutifully indicated it for treats (possibly dropped by the tracklayer). The second one was a clump of colored string and she refused to indicate it (where I back up at about 14:30).
This was a day we were not scheduled for a showcase track, so I laid a couple of tracks for others. There are some especially nice dogs. In particular the big male German Shepherd and Mollie did a great job. He has a lovely temperament and is very fast on the track. He also likes to express his opinions about things. I hope to see them again sometime.
Our first group exercise of the day was the tracklaying exercise. Sil gives us small pieces of paper with a number on it, then we go out in a field and lay a track with 4 corners and place one of the numbers (mine was 7 this time) at the start, each corner and the end. Then we go show Sil our map and describe/explain the triangulation markers we used for each. Then we go out in the field again and using our map and triangulation, find our markers. I had one of mine blow away before I could get it pushed into the mud, so I'd picked up a bit of orange plastic for my last marker. Happily I found all my markers. Yay for me.
At the end of the day we laid out Sil's contamination exercise, which we've done twice before. The black line is the track and blue dots are articles. The black dashed line is our exit path to leave the field. The red lines (and variations of red) are the contamination layers paths.I was really tired from carrying around an extra 5 pounds of mud on each boot all day and didn't want to do it. Gimme really wanted to, saying she'd been cooped up in the car "for a week", so we did. By the time we got to the start, it was dark and I couldn't see a thing. Gimme had no trouble and basically wanted to do the whole track at a run. It was a challenge to find my way off the track in the dark - we lucked out since someone brought their car close to the end or we might have spent the night out there. Seriously, I'm sure Gimme would have found the way to her peanut butter jar without those stinkin' car lights.
Monday
I was torn for our second showcase track as to whether we should do the crosstrack exercise or do something different. I always see other people get to do cool extreme obstacles and I wanted the chance. On Saturday I'd watched as Sil did a track at "the triangles" where he had to throw Twizzle across the ditch and I wanted to try something similar. So I opted for extreme obstacles. Initially Sil thought I meant compound/complex obstacles, until I clarified, saying I was looking for a truly physical exercise. I forgot to grab my camera, so I wasn't able to get a video. <pout>
This is a rough drawing of the track. The black line is the track and red dots are articles. The red-dotted line is where Gimme went. Each of the three short red-dotted lines are places where Gimme went on a walkabout. The one at the bottom was where she was drawn to the tree line.- Gimme did a great job on the extreme obstacles. Between the time Sil crossed the ditch and when we did, it filled up with water from the run-off of melting snow. The first place we crossed, it was running really fast and although Gimme was sure the track was on the other side, she was having none of it. The was a clump of grass in the middle and I tested it to make sure I could stand on it. When I did, I encouraged Gimme to "jump" and she did, landing on my feet and then on the other side.
- There was a steep uphill climb on the other side and I figured it was going to take a long time for me to get up there, maybe on hands and knees in places. Gimme was not about to wait on me, so she quite literally pulled me up the hill. I commented in the debrief how surprised I was when Gimme hauled me up the hill. Janet, one of our barn hunt friends, replied "I don't know why you're surprised, after all she is a weight pull champion." I hadn't even thought of it.
- The next obstacle where we re-crossed the creek, it was wider and the water wasn't as deep and Gimme just splashed through on her own. I was so proud of her - water is definitely not her thing.
- Now for the bad news, Sil got to see Gimme take me on a walkabout several times - all but one corner. He confirmed it is indeed caused by something I'm doing. He said every time she'd find the corner and start in the direction of the track, I didn't believe her and stopped her. So her response is to try some other direction until I follow her. Imagine her saying, with attitude, "Fine! We'll go this way, but there's no track here..."
All in all another great seminar. Gimme is so glad we have Sil, otherwise she might have given up on me by now. Just sayin...
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