Urban Tracking (129)

On Saturday, March 9th, I laid a track around the Burlington building. It was 47º and no breeze when I set the track. Then I went to a movie and we ran the track 2:10 later. By then there was a breeze, but I didn't notice it until we got by the back corner behind the building.

The first leg appears to switchback on itself, but it wasn't as bad as it looks. (it's hard to see in the picture because the bushes obscure the black track line)  While the switchback was only five yards from the line of the start, it was also 12 feet lower through big bushes. Gimme didn't have any problem with it. We were walking/tracking on ivy creeping across the sidewalk, which probably helped. Gimme did a great job getting across the street, even though there was a fair amount of traffic, but she had good scent holding surface and vegetation on the other side. For the first part of this leg she did really well cruising down the islands.

The place where there are two short orange lines crossing the track proved more challenging than the other spots between islands. Based on the parking lot layout, I think a lot of people drove down this aisle. Gimme was able to find the track on the curb of the next island and got through the left turn and the first part of the next leg without a hitch. The next trouble spot was the place where the two longer orange lines cross the track. This was a main traffic point in the parking lot and Gimme really struggled with it. She just couldn't find the scent anywhere out there. For her it just stopped. I finally helped her to a spot where I knew it was and then she went on to where the next corner was.

Along the side and the back edge between their property and the greenbelt/swamp, they have a long line of those huge concrete freeway dividers, with chainlink on top. The back corner (upper right in the picture) bumped against a divider and then turned 75º left. This corner is really the first place on the track where I noticed the breeze. Gimme was all over top of the dividers and sticking her nose in the cutouts under them. She had no interest in going left - zero, zip, nada. Based on her behavior I've drawn a blue line showing what I think the breeze was doing. I tried encouraging her left, but she wanted to take a sharp hook to the side of the building, repeatedly. I let her do it a couple times, but she wasn't able to get from there to the track. I helped her by organizing her search until she caught the drift of the article.

From there to the end of the track she had no problem. It took me 10 minutes to lay the track and it took Gimme 28 minutes to run it. I don't think we've ever had such a big difference between the time to lay it and the time to run it. On a positive note, Gimme never gave up - she IS persistent.

I want to repeat the two challenges again, but in separate tracks. I want to repeat the traffic crossing going in the other direction, so she has a curb to find the scent on. Then we'll do it off to the side, which will be the same amount of traffic. Maybe even slicing the angle or something. Likewise I want to do the breeze challenge in the back corner a couple of different ways, so Gimme can conquer it earlier in the track and/or without another big challenge in the same track.

Tracking with such a smart girl is a lot of fun.