Starts & Distractions (Oct 2)

Mondays are a tight day post work but I usually have a small window before picking D up at rock climbing team practice - perfect for starts! I got to her climbing gym in a business park and laid 3 short 1 turn starts around the business park. Unfortunately, before I could run the 1st track, the team came out to play capture the flag on the field and my delightfully thoughtful daughter saw a flag and article at the edge of the field and collected them for me 😜. I told her no worries - we'd re-walk it after her team practice ended. In the meantime, we worked on distractions training.

Starts went "ok" as described below but the big win was just in regular training (which I suppose will carry over to working through distractions at tracking too). I had backed in to the parking space beside the field and popped the back hatch to "tailgate" and watch the Capture the Flag game with Evie. If there is one thing she would've wanted to do, it 10000% would have been to jump out of the car deck and go run and play with the screaming kiddos. As you can see below, after about 5 min of working on her staying in a sit or settle (a down w hip or shoulder under her so she doesn't pop up as quick) she was still very keyed into the kiddos (especially her own one out there). I kept feeding behind her to emphasize the reward comes from being back in the car and whenever excitement erupted near, I fed her on the car deck. 

About five minutes later, we had a short window of this!

Criteria started shifting to rewards when she checked in with me w/ eye contact. It was a fun way to spend 15 min watching D and getting some training in.

After D was done with practice, we ran the pink then orange start tracks at about 30" age. Overall, she did "ok" - was very distracted and took a bit to focus in (similar to what we were seeing last season) - a good nod to the need to get her out & working at new places all the time and Starts is a great way to do this. The turn on the pink track was beautiful. More casting on orange track around turn but strong pull down the 2nd leg.

The teal track was the track I originally plotted at 5:55 and re-walked at 6:35 after kiddos ran all over the track and the start flag and start article were removed. When I re-walked it, I found the food drop on the corner and made the turn and made my way to the end article (hurray for confident double ups and map making but if I wasn't 100% sure on the re-walk I wouldn't have let her run it because 2 nearby tracks is no bueno). 

Here's a video from the teal track. We ran it at 6:47 so it was 12" from re-walk and ~50" from original walk pre-game. The end zone was right were our turn was and you can see her little brain smoking trying to work this turn.

I think she did a really nice job finding the line on Leg 1 after the cued down to start. When she was struggling at the corner, I remembered to step back a few steps and wait for her to catch the end of Leg 1 and get round the turn. She gave some strong pulls in different directions but my legs were frozen until that nose was on the ground (~40sec on video). After a few feet she looked around a bit more and than at ~50sec it was clear as daylight she had Leg 2 and was off to the article! I did have to cue the down at the end again here - something we'll keep working through.