Field Tracking (64)

On Thursday, March 5th, Nadine and I met at Flaming Geyser Park for tracking. We used the plan I had devised last week. Nadine ran her track (purple line) twice. Her first run was with Cricket, who got caught up a couple of times by my crosstrack and then finally ignored it on the last crosstrack. Then Nadine ran it with Sugar, who aced it.

I thought Sugar would be inclined to follow Cricket's deviations, which is why Sil recommends against taking more than one dog down the same track. In this case, I think Cricket came back to the track really close to where she left it. So, when Sugar ran the track, Cricket's return footsteps were younger than the deviation footsteps, so it made sense to her to follow those younger steps. Following from older to younger footsteps is how dogs know which direction to follow a track. As early in her tracking career as Sugar is, she has apparently mastered this concept.

The initial track (the one I laid) was 1:10 old when Gimme started. Nadine laid her track (our crosstrack) at the same time. Cricket ran her track at 20 minutes and Sugar ran it at 40 minutes. So the crosstracks were the same 1:10 age as our track, 50 minutes and 30 minutes. It was pleasantly sunny, about 50 degrees. There was no noticeable breeze until we got to the very end of the track (black line) and came out of from behind the hill.

Gimme did a great job ignoring the Nadine-Cricket-Sugar crosstracks until the last one. She would notice them, but not follow them. This is a substantial improvement. On the last one she appeared to turn down the crosstrack, but not exactly on it, so it "could" have been because of the breeze coming up in that spot and pushing the track scent to her left. She went a little way (dotted red line) and then caught the scent of the final article and turned back to it.

She did such a good job; I'm really encouraged by her efforts. Yayyy Gimme!

Nadine took pictures of us while we were tracking (not in order).  Enjoy...