Urban Tracking (137)

On Thursday, April 18th, Nadine and I met at the Auburn Cinema for tracking. I asked Nadine for a simple track with lots of articles for motivation. It was a cool 49° and we aged the track for 25 minutes. It had rained in the middle of the night, so the pavement was still wet.

 

The two white blobs to the left are where we were parked. The two orange-red blobs in the upper right are police cars with lights flashing. Gimme did great, wanting to run in places, even squeezing between a curb and a car to get the second article. She was distracted by the policemen - you know how she loves men, plus there was a lot activity as they were making the perp spread-eagle against the patrol car. Thankfully she went back to work on her own so I didn't have to pull her back from gawking and she was almost immediately rewarded by another article. She took the first turn so fast she didn't even seem to notice it. The second turn was a little more challenging, but she figured it out soon enough.

She was flying along, finding articles and having a great time. She had a bit of a challenge when she got to the missing article (the second one after the second turn). But not finding anything she looked back at me, saying, "What the...?" I encouraged her to "track-on" and she did. Before long she found the last article.

She was still struggling with pollen at this time last year, so I think the bee pollen is helping a lot. It was fun to see her really being her usual tracking-genius-self. Of course, we are still making things easier for her. Initially the making it easier was still leaving her with a lot of challenges, so now we'll gradually get back to her usual parameters.

BTW - I mentioned J'Anna and I were losing our Thursday time slot for RallyFrEe practice at Pawsabilities. The slot will be filled with a Freestyle class, which we both want to try. So not only do we have to move our practice to another day, I also have to move my tracking day. J'Anna and Nadine are both able to move to Tuesday, alternating between them. So for the moment all is working out.

I'm excited about the freestyle class. I'm planning to arrive early and help Lezlie with set-up and have offered to help with her RallyFrEe class, which follows ours. It'll be challenging for Gimme since the class is large with strange dogs, but I'm sure she'll get used to it. And I'll get used to the strangers with their unknowns (specifically can/will they control their dogs). I sure hope this lives up to the hype and proves worth the inconvenience of changing our schedules with my two practice partners and other things to dovetail in. Cross your fingers.