Today I wanted to lay one longer track with her pattern of S5W20F5 with turns in the open field or near a wood boundary. I designed a beautiful track on the bus home and arrived to the field to find an empty parking lot at the athletic fields (Yes!). Except, as I walked off the field to drive home to get Evie, the whole of suburbia arrived for soccer practices. I caught a coach and asked what time they’d be off the back field. Even timing of everything, the planned run at 45 minutes would be closer to 2 hrs.
I decided to give it a whirl and call things early if she was struggling with the age. When we arrived, there was still one group practicing on the upper field with the 1st 3 legs. I remembered that when I laid the track and crossed the 18” concrete trench between fields, I scuffed up the edge of the sod so there was good scent but also a ground marker of the track. Given all the factors and that I only had about 10 min left of dusk, I grabbed the start flag and start article and moved them to the trench scuff, thus cutting the track in half but salvaging what I could for the day.
Track laid: 5:05pm - weather 72* with light breeze and no clouds
Track run: 7:07pm (2 hr) - 63* with dusk coming quick.
Fields became dewy as dusk arrived + field was very cross tracked in the interim time. Between that and the cool weather, Evie was wide open and a bit wild but settled into tracking.
Start: BEAUTIFUL! Age/pattern no issue and she was *tracking* to the first turn and took it clearly. While on the 1st leg, she was bobbing and weaving to smell in a bit of a frenzy but would then ‘hook’ into the track so I could read her but it wasn’t super clean. It didn’t seem like she was having trouble with the track but instead what just hyper stimulated.
The 2nd leg was similar and then we got to the 2nd turn and I was having trouble identifying if we we on the turn or past it because my lineups were now dark. Evie searched around for a few minutes and I backed up but she didn’t grab the track. After a few minutes, she downed and whined in frustration. I tried to get her to track again and tossed a cheese bite but she repeated her frustration. I snuck the start article out of my pocket to the ground when she was looking elsewhere and when she saw it and downed, we had a grand old party! I then walked with her down the final leg to collect the end article and she picked up the track and downed on the actual end article. We did nose target back past the other fields of soccer games and called it good for the night.
My takeaways:
- I think it was clever to use the ground marker and salvage half of the track - will have to remember that if it comes up again. I try not to put flags or markers on the public fields so the scuff was helpful at a soccer field with little ground markers.
- I did not want to run it past 60 min but gave it a go cautiously. The start was so clean and there were other pretty components so I don’t think the 2hr track was out of range for her. That said, I will not go that high again on age for a bit. The practice at 2 hrs age was a happy accident in the end.
- She communicated really clearly with me on the track which is valuable. She can definitely be sassy and tell me when we’re (*i’m) off the track.
- Next outing will be fun and easy - avoiding struggles and frustrations for her.
Great use of a challenging day. Question from the start of the post--S5W20...F5? Ideally, as you lengthen the walk, the food also decreases, generally remaining at the middle of the walk. with as difficult as this was, F5 is fine, but in general, as you increase the walk the food remains the same (that is, in the middle of the walk). Perhaps I failed to properly explain that....
ReplyDeleteI'm certain this was a typo on my end - sorry for the confusion! Yes, I always put the food 1/2 way through the walk so it would have been S5W20F10.
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