Tracking (50 & 51)

On Sunday, June 23rd, I laid a track for her at Flaming Geyser. It was a Mommy-duty day, and she lives just 8 minutes from the park, so it's a great opportunity to lay a well-aged track. It was 73º and aged to 2:35; it was also very dry and recently mowed.

She was a little slow to really lock in the scent of what she was following, but then got going well. The first two corners were really nice. She got going fast on the third leg and overran the corner by a lot. I hadn't drawn a map (bad me), so I didn't really know exactly where the corner was. I knew she'd overrun it, since she almost always does. So I moved her back in searching, but I don't think I moved her back far enough. She caught drifting scent and made a turn and I accepted it. She was still off the track, but converging. She missed the article (light blue dot).  She converged until she was right on the corner for the next turn. Normally she can smell an article from 50 yards, so something about the conditions made this hard. There were some slight dips and swells in this part of the track, so perhaps it was harder than usual. The part of the track on the big rise (long uncut grass) was more of a meandering path than is captured in the picture. She went right through a large game bedding area and on to find an article. Her road crossing was flawless and she found the last article readily.

On Thursday, June 27th, Nadine and I met at Flaming Geyser. When I got there our track was already laid and aging. Nadine put flags out to indicate where I should lay the crosstrack (the dotted lavender line). Unfortunately she didn't leave enough room for me to move (only about 10 yards), so it was a much bigger challenge than a usual crosstrack. Also, she hadn't mentally fixed in her mind where the last leg of Gimme's track was and gave me instructions to start laying Cricket's track in the wrong spot, so it crossed our final leg twice (red dotted line). It was 2:45 old and the temps were in the early 70's.

I don't know what the rules are for crosstracks, but I don't think Gimme was fully locked onto the scent of our track when she came on the much younger crosstrack. She found it very attractive and kept drifting over to where it paralleled the real track. She probably would have missed the first article without my help. Once she made the turn up onto the plateau area, she did better for a bit and was quickly rewarded with an article. When she got on the path (the meandering line) she was verrrrry distracted by a bunch of long grass to our left for about the first third of the leg. She kept going into it and then jumping around and seeming to play in it. We think there may have been a lot of deer smell. She's not usually distracted by game or varmints, but this time it took a lot to get her back into tracking. We made it down the path and she readily followed the track as it angled off the path into the field.

She got the open turn of the last leg, but quickly ran into the contamination of the track for Cricket. It was much younger than her track, had my scent on it twice (just like the crosstrack), Nadine's scent (which was our track) and Cricket's scent. Gimme got caught up in it, back-tracking it. When I restrained her from continuing to follow it, she swung over onto our track and soon found the final article.

These have not been our best tracking efforts. I think I/we need to plan better and make maps and/or pre-mark corners. I need to read up on crosstracks to know what training standard we are aiming for.

Next Friday, July 5th, Gimme and I are going to the Puget Sound Dalmatian Club show and are entered in Rally Novice B. If successful, this will complete our title.