Tracking (54)

On Saturday, July 20th, I laid a track at Flaming Geyser. It was 79º with a light, variable direction, breeze when we ran the track. The variable direction breeze was most noticeable on the first leg, where the breeze direction changed 3 times. Because I've noticed a little difficulty in tracking (not in nosework) I've been trying for less age, so this was only 1-hour-20-minutes. It took me 11 minutes to lay the track and 18 minutes for Gimme to run it.

Gimme was slow at the start. It just seemed to take her a bit to figure out which way the track went. I even had to re-scent her from the sock I'd already put in my pocket. I sent an email to Sil asking for clarification about what constitutes a re-start.

She was generally slow on the first leg, but picked up speed after finding the first article. She did a good job on the first turn and found the second article nicely. Her course up the hill and the next turn were good. The arcing dotted blue line shows the area in shade, due to the hill blocking the setting sun. Gimme picks up speed on the third leg and actually overruns the article (a half sock), but finds it when I hold her back (light blue dot). She has a little difficulty with the last turn and last leg (out of the shade), so I re-scented her. She gets back to it and finishes nicely.

Gimme has missed more articles this summer than she has in the whole rest of her tracking career - so I plan to make an article circle for her this coming weekend so I can rebuild value in finding articles. I may do a bunch of these - they are a good exercise during the heat and pollen season.

I mentioned above Gimme is demonstrating issues with pollen in tracking, but not in nosework. I think scentwork with her nose down in the grass or in parking lots is going to be more of an issue when pollen is high; unlike in nosework where there could be less pollen exposure (except for exterior searches) and certainly shorter search times.

Gimme is doing better this year than last year. I got her started on bee pollen earlier and it seems to help. I'd been taking it myself until just recently and it was helping me too. However I stopped this week to get more from my honey-guy and he said he won't have any more until next March. Something about losing 80 hives last year, so he's rebuilding hives and can't take pollen from the bees. So, I've stopped taking any of the pollen to make sure Gimme has it as long as possible.

Us Moms sacrifice for our kids, eh...