Jan 6 - 2 turn Long track + article indication activity

Today we were short on time so I wanted to do 2 focused items: doing a single longer track with 2 turns and doing Betty’s infamous article indication activity to start getting more solid indications.

Location: Robious Athletic Fields 

Cover: dead short grass with some mud

Time: tracks laid at 4:30pm, run at 25 min 

Track layer: self 

Weather: 52*, partly sunny, field fully in shade with sun going down

Track length: (per Google Maps measurements)

• Leg 1 = 250'
• Leg 2 = 375'
• Leg 3 = 125'
• Total = 750' / 250 yards

Track map:

Notes:

• Good start and focus from the get-go. She maintained confident tension but did not go wildly down track.
• I haven’t laid a track across this small trench between the two fields before so I shuffled 3’ before and after trench with food every foot to encourage her to cross concrete trench and keep tracking.
• Large “drier” mud area in front of goal on Leg 2 which had her casting a bit more in search of track but she was working hard to get the track.
• Great turns today! She nailed both L 90* and open R turns. It was close to dinner time so the scent pads and food drops were highly consumed today. Scent pads were S10 after turns.
• She stopped at article but didn’t down until I got to it myself.

Article Activity

• Scuffed a straight track and dropped 10 articles, each 5-10 yards apart.
• Articles were mostly cloth items we have tracked with before (gloves, mittens, washcloths, cloth toys) plus 2 non-cloth articles she had only seen once before a while ago (plastic measuring spoon, 1” wide paintbrush). Non cloth articles were 7th and 9th in the order.
• Ran “track” 3x

Notes:

• First time through: She stopped at first few articles but I had to tell her to down and then placed cheese on top of article. She didn’t indicate non cloth articles but I didn’t let her continue and showed her the article and told her down, put cheese on top after she downed, and repeated again before going to next article.
• Second time through: She stopped at first few articles, I waited her out and she downed on her own and gave the cheese on top of the article. Progress! For the non-cloth articles, she still didn’t want to indicate initially but I waited her out and she finally downed on them. Progress!
• Third/final time through: She knew the game and immediately downed on cloth articles! For several, she stayed on the article and actually waited for a release (“ok”) to leave it and move to next one. For non-cloth, she indicated them ( stopped and held a look on it) but I had to wait her out to down or tell her to down. Not as good as the cloth article behavior but a giant step forward on all fronts! 
• I had pre-planned to do no more than 3 times through and definitely didn’t want to overdo this activity so we stopped here.
• Will definitely try to do this more often! It was almost more of a game than training and saw some major progress in a short focused session :)