Urban Tracking (161)

On Thursday, May 14th, Nadine and I met at Flaming Geyser for tracking. I made a plan ahead of time, but we had to modify it. The park people set aside a large area for migratory bird nesting. I sure hope the birds know how to read those signs so they know where to nest. It didn't affect us too bad, but it did mean I could only watch the very beginning of Nadine's tracks.

Nadine ran all three of her girls first (red line) and after she was out of the way, I started Gimme (black line). The track was about an hour old, with very little breeze. The gray circle at the beginning was where I asked Nadine to potty her girls on the way to her track startline. Gimme was, of course, fascinated by it and had to over-mark everything. On a positive note, she was able to go back to tracking.

Gimme struggled with the first turn. All three of Nadine's girls got caught up by my cross-track right before our turn, so they were all over the place, which then threw Gimme off. Another issue was the location of our turn. It bumped right up to the area set aside for the birds, so I had to restrict Gimme's attempts to solve the issue to keep her out of the nesting area.

From there to the end, Gimme was amazing. The only other area that presented a slight issue was the first road crossing (upper left corner). There was a man coming toward us walking a large out-of-control dog, so I didn't feel I could let her take her time to solve it. I just walked her to the other side and she quickly found it in the grass and was off like a shot.

She sure is glad to be back to tracking. We are also doing parkour, getting some entries ready for the special Themes titles series.