On Friday, March 29th, Nadine and I met at Game Farm for tracking. She laid a simple track, taking advantage of the swells around the two soccer fields. The track was aged just 25 minutes, it was 50° and the breeze was minimal.Gimme did well with all of it. She did seem to be tracking off to the side, either uphill or downhill from the track, but not with any consistency. She found all her articles easily. The only place she had noticeable difficulty was the corner at the bottom of the picture. Both path crossings were really precise, but she just seemed confused by the corner. It was really close to the path and a lot of people walk dogs at this park, so it may have been dog contamination/distraction.
I laid a track at Flaming Geyser on Saturday, March 30th, before driving to Mom's (ten minutes away). My goal was an age close to 1 hour, it ended up being 1:30. It was a warm 65° with no real breeze.Gimme started well, aced the first corner and dragged me up the hill to the plateau. She was going really fast on the second leg and missed the article. I held her in the area and she finally found it, but it took awhile. She did great on the turn, down the hill, crossing the road, and was really solid on the third leg. Neither of us could find the second article (light blue dot on the picture). It was a small plastic item, which probably doesn't hold much scent. She did a nice job on the rest of the track, good solid corners and found those articles readily.
I thought about it and realized the articles she's been having trouble with since this pollen issue began are all hard surfaces and as such they don't hold much scent. Some of my small leather articles are hard leather and don't take up as much scent, not like a softer leather glove. So until she's back to normal, I plan to use articles which are likely to take on more scent.
On Sunday, March 31st, I laid another track for her at Flaming Geyser. Again I was aiming for track age close to 1 hour, but it was 1:40. It was a warm 67° and no breeze. The track conditions this time were really close to the day before, just ten minutes older and 2° hotter. Gimme did very well on this track, much better than the day before. I made sure she was well hydrated on coconut water, all the articles were soft surface (hidden from view as well as I could), and I marked everything. I put in flags for the articles, five steps (3 yards) past them. I also had a lot more articles, so we had a lot of reward points. I was ready to give her water, but she never needed it.She did a great job on the whole track. I thought the long diagonal road crossing would be a challenge, but it wasn't. It took her a few moments to decide to cross, but then she was right on it, making the turn on pavement back to the grass easily. It took her longer to decide to turn up through the trees on the dirt path, but after checking other possibilities, she did it. The article on the dry dirt path was covered with dried leaves and she still found it easily. She wasn't sure about going straight ahead through the steep ditch-edge as we left the path through the trees, but after checking left and right, she did it and was soon rewarded with an article. We had a lot of fun playing with the glove at the end.
On Thursday, April 4th, Nadine and I met at Auburn Cinema. She laid a 5-turn track, mostly island serpentines. It was 48° and we aged it just 20 minutes. Gimme did a really nice job with this. There wasn't much challenge, but she did well with what there was. She did a great job on all the corners, even the hard one turning away from the building near the end.
She did this so well I'm hope it means the bee pollen is doing its job. Of course we are making changes to make scent work easier for her so she continues to learn and enjoy tracking.
- Track age is 1/3 to 1/2 of her usual time.
- Track hydration on hard surfaces.
- Soft surface articles.
- Extra focus on hydration and prepared to water and re-scent her as needed.
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