Whassup

During our last tracking get together at Auburn Cinema on March 19th, Nadine took pictures while Gimme and I tracked. Here's the best of them.

Since we've been staying home, Gimme and I are walking almost every day and mostly only in our own neighborhood. We've walked at our regular place a few times, but only during the middle of the week. I've noticed there are a lot of people out walking their dogs, who haven't done it before and have no control of their dog or are completely clueless. So it seems prudent to stick with streets with a lot fewer people and where the streets are wider than the path where we'd been walking.

I've developed a route to avoid the worst behaved dogs behind fences. It's two miles and sticks to the relatively flat area.

I've been trying to teach Gimme to get to my side when she sees a car, just like she does for bicycles. It hasn't progressed real well, probably because there just aren't enough cars to make the link.

Like me, many neighbors are doing spring cleaning and such. So we see a lot of FREE stuff by the road. Little Miss Gimme, a/k/a Nosey Posey, always checks out the free stuff. For the most part it's a cursory sniff. However one day she really got into a box and half of her disappeared. Then she came out with a stuffed star. It's a baby toy and doesn't have familiar dog toy smells, so I have no idea what she smelled to cause her to go all-in. She was so happy and carried her prize home.

Since then every time she sees a pile of free stuff, she races to it - filled with hope. When she realizes there's no toy there, she trudges on, all forlorn. Who knew there could be so much disappointment in life... 

Nosework practice 200415

I decided to use plastic Easter eggs for container searches. Although the search area was in the front yard, Gimme was sniffing like crazy as we went out the back door and started up the side. It's entirely possible the breeze was bringing scent along the side of the house.

Container 1 video - I set 4 paired hides, with 9 empty eggs. The main strong breeze was blowing from the street, but it died down intermittently and then there was a swirling undercurrent. Gimme goes to check the plastic shoebox sitting on the steps, which I used to bring the eggs out, including the scented ones. It took her a long time to find these hides, even though they were paired. Given the air disturbance from the traffic and the generally variable breeze, it's understandable.

When she finished the search I went around picking up the eggs. The last two were hard to find. Gimme followed me around for a bit, then laid in the shade and watched me. I finally found #12 and then started walking a grid pattern to find the last one (before the yard guy and his mower find it tomorrow). Gimme watches some more, then sighs dramatically before walking right to it and pointing it out for me. Always helpful, always with attitude.

Container 2 video - I decided to give her a converging odor challenge and set up the same 4 paired hides in my little bathroom. She left the room a couple of times, which I think was just to clear her head. She finds the first 2 hides really fast. It didn't take long to find #3. The fourth one took the longest.  

Nosework practice 200410

I've been wanting to do searches at the Bobcat dealership and this week's online exercise was the perfect excuse.

Vehicle 1 video - We had five paired hides and one unpaired. The breeze was blowing from 7 to 1 o'clock, which explains why Gimme wanted to go to the tractor on the right and out of frame. I let her explore so she could follow her nose to the unpaired hide, which she did. The 5th and 6th hides were challenging. It was interesting how Gimme found the 5th hide by following the scent across the crack of the cowling. The 6th hide was much harder than I expected.

Vehicle 2 video - Six unpaired hides. I expected more of a pattern in these searches, but I think the crossways breeze made it kind of scattered. She spent a lot of time checking out places where there was no hide, but the scent could have been pooling or she was looking in usual places. These are her first mowing machines.

Vehicle 3 video - I know how much she loves high hides, so I decided to do an odor bomb in the cab of the rental machine. It proved interesting. You can see when she realizes it's a high hide as her nose starts going up. The cab is closed on the far side, but there was a little crack and she caught the scent on the far side where it traveled down a crack in the cowling (1:22). In watching the video, I wonder if some of the scent didn't fall down on the tracks or it was interesting dirt smells. I've included two still pictures with arrows at the end, since you can't clearly see what she was doing on the far side.

Gimme was satisfied for 15 minutes, then she started complaining how she NEVER gets to do anything.

Nosework practice 200407

I checked to see if homework was up before I went out on Tuesday. It wasn't, so I set up these searches. The big one was a close repeat of the search of the rubble pile from the week before. There was breeze in the same way, but not as strong as before. The single hide search was just an interesting utility pole hide.

Exterior 1 video - I had the camera set to cover the entire search area, but I think I moved the camera a little bit when I hit record. Gimme finds the first hide in 15 seconds. You'll see a little change of behavior at 35 seconds, but she decides to go on to the farthest hide. It takes her 18 seconds to find the far right hide. She finds the last hide quickly, once she decides to go for it. All in all this was a cleaner search - which I credit to pairing.

Exterior 2 video - The breeze was blowing from the brushy area behind the hide, so I was surprised when Gimme went toward the brush. I expected her to get pulled more toward the hide. I also can't really explain why she was so direct toward the hide from where she sniffed near the fence/brush. The hide had only been up 3 minutes, so I don't understand how she could have caught it so easily. Plus it was Myrrh scented, which is very low volatility (i.e. doesn't spread readily).

I hope to get out tomorrow to set up searches at the tractor sales down the road. I thought I'd be able to search there during the day, but instead have to wait until after 5:00. Who knew tractor sales was an essential business...

Nosework practice 200401

I set the camera to have a good view of the hide on the utility fixture. All four hides are paired (one is behind the camera).

Exterior video - Gimme goes right to the nearest hide, just six seconds. I thought the hide stuffed in the bottom of the downspout (corner of the building) would be easy, but it wasn't. She goes right by the one on the utility fixture. The hide she found second was in a spot where there shouldn't have been any breeze to draw her to it. But given her directness, there must've been something to pull her in. She sniffed the air louvers, so obviously there probably was more air flow than I thought. It took a bit of encouragement last time to get her in the area between the utility and the wall, so the paired hide drew her in more naturally. Nice! From the other direction, the downspout was easy.

Nice search. Gimme is loving getting back to nosework.

Nosework practice 200330

I set up 3 hides in a rubble pile before we went walking, so it aged about 45 minutes. The camera battery was low, so there's a hiccup in the video.

It created an interesting challenge because the breeze was strong and blowing toward us from behind the pile, so the scent was channeling under and past slabs. I tried to set hides so Gimme wouldn't have to climb on the slabs, but she chose to do it anyway.

Exterior video - On the first hide the breeze was blowing scent around a chunk of blacktop and out onto grass nearby, so Gimme first indicated about 18" from source (18 and 24 seconds). When I didn't respond, she easily went back to it and then worked her way to source (41 seconds). The second hide was backed by a pile of dirt with slabs, so it was easier to source. The third hide turns out to be pretty hard, since the breeze is blowing through between the two piles and channeling again. Gimme actually takes me back to the second hide and I paid her again. Then she goes almost directly to the third hide.

Turns out our "assignment" was for paired hides.  I found the assignment post by accident after I'd done our search.  I will revisit this as a set of paired hides; I'm waiting for similar wind conditions.

Urban Tracking (158)

On Thursday, March 19th, Nadine and I met at Auburn Cinema for tracking. The black track is what Nadine laid. At the same time I laid the blue track, creating 5 actual crosstracks and 1 slice at a corner. Nadine ran her track twice, with Cricket and then Sugar.

Then I ran it with Gimme at about 45 minutes. It was cool with a slight breeze. Gimme did a great job on all the crosstracks. The place where she had the most difficulty was at the corner slice, which was also where Nadine's girls were most challenged. Corner slices are a different deal, so they can easily prove difficult. It also could have been more challenging simply because Nadine's girls tracked in multiple directions trying to sort out the corner - so they were laying more contamination for Gimme to work through. She did work through it and I'm so proud of her.

Ideally next time we put down treats for Nadine's girls to keep them on the track. Of course that means I have to actually remember to do it. Since we haven't tracked since and don't know when we will track next... my memory may not be very reliable...