Week 2 - Nov 3 - Salisbury Presby

Time/Weather: 5:50pm, 68°, winds NE 4 mph

Track layer: me, aged about 10 min, each laid South to North/NE (ish) by using a cluster of trees for double line-ups where I always used the same lead tree and varied angles of tracks using different and tree trunk or telephone pole.

3 Tracks: T1=S20 with food @2, T2 = S25 with food @2, and T3=S30 with food @2

Field: short mowed grass

Summary:

First time in this small field at a church near home. It's great for proximity to home and shorter tracks but I was a little worried about road traffic / noise from the club across from the field. Fortunately, Evie was not one bit distracted by those factors - she hopped out of the car yipping and pulling to start. She had a LOT of energy today and due to daylight, we went to field before she was calmer than I would have liked so that's a point to work on.

Drive was great, focus not so much - she seemed to be frantic and moving too quickly such that she'd find herself past treats or to the side and then needing to search to re-find the track. I used the favorite treat (string cheese) and she ate most of what she found though l did observe on several occasions that she would circle to find the treat and sniff it but leave it and get back to tracking. This seemed like an “okay-great-found the trail!" moment of reinforcement.

Her focus got much better after about a track and a half - almost like she had gotten in a ‘warm-up' and over the initial 'yay-it's find the cheese time!' excitement. She still isn't giving the articles any additional attention apart from eating the treat pile (glove, a favorite squeaky plush toy, tennis ball). I put the ball as track 3's article and offered lots of ball play & toss but got zero engagement-she just wanted to go sniffing more.

Questions at this point:  (it’s a long list!)

• Start/Warming up - Connecting to class last night, should I be treat magnet-ing to the start flag so she focuses on the tracking training, especially when in a new location? I may be way overthinking this. Also, in +R, we do the in and out game for warmup and setting focus (while also assessing mindset /train ability in the moment) - is there something similar I should do with this training? It took her a bit to settle into the task but once she did, she was on the line tight. Is a short S20 w/u track before main tracks something to try?
• Going behind - she did this once on track 2. I shortened the line to reduce radius of search and waited her out. Is this the right approach? 
• Cleaning field - When we finished and she was off the harness, I walked the field with her to pick up flags and realized she was gobbling up the missed treats along the track. Is this ok or would it interfere with training process? In future, I can crate her then p/u flags.
• Increasing track length - what are the indicators we should be looking for before track lengths increase? 
• Articles - any advice on where to adjust / grow interest? My initial ideas were to train article interest at home in a game or maybe to add ridiculous amounts of food on article (currently do 4-5 pieces, so could do part of dinner in article perhaps).