As we've been doing, we did a track overlapping a track. Gimme's track wasn't aged very long, about 40 minutes. Nadine ran Cricket and Sugar on the red track. The light blue arrow is the wind coming from the north. The white blob below the arrow is an 18-wheeler. It and the Wal-Mart store blocked much of the wind, but channeled it down the western side of our tracking layout.Gimme struggled to get started. The crosstrack was only 10 feet from her start sock and the wind was channeled strongly there. Fortunately when she figured it out, she was rewarded by an article. There was no sign she even noticed the second cross track and she found the article next to the curb easily. She went about 6 feet past the first corner in the grass, then arced left and rejoined the track, quickly finding the next article. She did a great job with the other two turns on the grass, crossing the road and finding the next article. Again there was no sign she noticed the third cross track.
Gimme got stalled before the fourth cross track and was tending to go off to the left of the track. I'm sure this was from the wind channeled into this part of the track. She did finally figure it out and then got to the final article. Since she was working so hard to figure out the wind problem, I couldn't tell if the final cross track was an issue.
Overall she did a great job. The 18-wheeler-wind problem was a new one for us. Since she hadn't been tracking in 5 weeks, I was pleased with how she took up where she left off. Her tail wagged constantly and wagged faster when she found an article. All the extra walking and weekly nosework practices aren't enough for her. My brilliant girl needs to have opportunities to use her brain.
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