One of our goals for this year was to earn our TDX. Between the horrid winter and her injury recovery we are already behind the timeline 8 ball. I have a fairly aggressive plan to be ready to enter the fall tracking events. Hopefully we will be ready by fall (and we can get drawn for a test), and if I have to readjust my plan, so be it. I don’t want to spoil her joy of the sport pushing her to my arbitrary goal.
We have been practicing elements of the test and running fun short motivational tracks. I was not getting anywhere with consistent correct start lines ( in the TDX you have one flag and the dog needs to figure out what direction from that flag the leg of the track goes), so I called my tracking instructor to set up something so she could figure out what the issue was-long story short, it was me standing in her scent path and crowding her.
I also got some very valuable insight into what she is telling me. As she approaches and before she commits to the track or a new leg, she ever so slightly dips her nose one way or the other-that is her queue to me saying “Mom, I think that it goes this way, but I need to check the rest of the area to be sure, ” and then she starts searching. This used to freak me out, b/c I knew she was off the track, but now I know she is just being thorough (OK, it still does freak me out a little). This was her first experience with road crossings. 1 st one she said- “hey tracks don’t go over roads” . Her Auntie Ruth had taken frozen hot dog and used it like chalk to encourage her to investigate the road. By the 4th crossing she was considering the asphalt as a possibility that she needed to explore (thank goodness she does not use all of her brains for evil-LOL). Since Ruth knows we plan on pursuing a Champion tracking title she threw in some VST elements. The scent track going by the water and fence threw her off, but she kept trying to figure it out and with a little help she was able to find the correct path. She is so much fun to track because she loves it. Most of the photos I post of her show her with a smile on her face, but when she is tracking she has her game face on!!!! I will try to capture it sometime.
Below is the practice track Ruth sprung on me with her notes when I was only thinking we would work out the startline issue:
Thank you so much for sharing this with us! I love tracking! Hate teaching them what we want, but once we communicate what we are looking for then it is very zen-like, but also like a puzzle that you have to analyze as you read the terrain, weather, winds, etc.
Excellent!!
Very interesting to see the map of your track.