1/19/25. Short tracks around fences and woods
1/19/25. Laid these short tracks one at a time, ran him within 5 minutes and put him in the car to marinate while I laid the next one. Food drops varied between 10-15 steps apart. He got better with each track. Track #1. Struggled at the turn into tall cover https://youtu.be/imxw4lYuoHA?feature=shared Track #2 short track from tall cover to short towards fence https://youtu.be/bA4Q4ZZpGu4?feature=shared Track #3 Between 2 fences towards woods https://youtu.be/R9EverPLGJ8?feature=shared Track #4 Parallel woods and turn away https://youtu.be/88B4jnpOJYc?feature=shared
Nice yes??? That had to feel better! Your scent pads were nicely placed. I would not change anything for your next time out. You did a good job of maintaining your criteria for stopping at the scent pads. And you are doing a nice job standing still when he is not tracking. So, the next time out, stay with the same general layout and double lay. Three things I would do differently - 1. adjust that harness or find a new one. Do you see it shifting off to the side? I would hope we could find a harness that adjusts better or fits better. 2. In a perfect world with plenty of time, I would run track 1, walk back to the car telling him how smart he is, crate him. Go back on track 1 and pick up your flags while he sits in the crate soaking up everything he learned on track 1. Return to car, get him out and run track 2. I know your time is short and it is getting dark early, but when you can - let him soak in the crate between tracks. 3. Go to the Training Exercises 'tab' of the wix page and go all the way to the bottom of that page. Click on TRACKING GOALS FORM and print out a dozen of them. Get in the habit of filling out this form for each track, and you can draw your map on the back of the form. So one side establishes your goals, celebrates your awesome stuff, identifies your struggles, acknowledges weather, etc and the back is your map. Your track laying will improve and you will start to understand correlations between goals, weather, time, struggles, etc. Good job today - you have to be tickled!!
ReplyDeleteYES YES YES!!! Can you see how much better the start was? And, at the turn, you can see a tiny bit of what’s been frustrating you on turns—so he just needs to learn how to handle the change of direction! Remember, to us it’s a turn, to him it’s reorienting in the area. Now I’m going to go watch the second one. OK. Start not quite as perfect…be willing to keep the leash short until he clearly shows you the direction of the track. “Surfing” is his MO, so let’s make criteria that he finds the track at the start (he doesn’t correct back to the food drop). Again, we got to see the exact same turn behavior we haven’t liked—only with food every 5, and a short lead, he stayed with his nose deep and actively looked for the track. A little bit of surfing on the first leg…but again, frequent food and short line taught him how to solve the problem. His article behavior is a thing of beauty! I’d repeat this exact same thing again…if you get the same result, we will change something. That was beautiful!!!
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