Article Tracks + Stairstep Track (Jan 21)

Working to get in some tracking activities ahead of my trip so we did double duty today. I laid a stair step and then brought Evie out to do 2x article track while it finished aging.

Article Tracks

New indication motivator: Hand pulled white chicken from deli! Man, she thought this was out of the world amazing as evidenced by the progression in the two article tracks. By the ~7th article of 10, she was running to articles and downing in 1st track. By the second run through, she was GALLOPPING to next article and downing (not so much tracking but given the goal is to work on article indications, I'll take it!) My hope was that by doing this BEFORE we ran the stair step track, it would carry over into the main track practice. The hardest article for her was a small, brown leather piece but she handled wood and plastic pieces fine and easily handled all fabric pieces.

1st run of article track:

2nd run of article track:

Stairstep Track

Weather: 27*, sunny, breezy 6-13 mph

Cover: mowed soccer field green/dead grass. Note: Ground was frozen solid! Couldn't even get a flag in to stay at the start

Age: 70 min

Track map: (laid with scuff pattern per class page) Only 2 food drops included. One on a downhill to next field when we went past bleachers and the other after making the non-scuffed turn.

Video:

Notes:

• Start wasn't awesome. I couldn't get a flag in the ground bc it was so dang frozen. She was highly distracted by crows on the field at the start. We waited them out and then started but as you can see in the video, she had beef with one. It riled her up a little when she continued the track (I could tell she was a bit frenzied but thankfully she chose to carry on with work) but after that she was tracking well and made next turn on rails.
• On 4th leg, she navigated some frozen water culverts well but then overshot next turn. I took the 5 steps back and she caught the track and kept going.
• Before final turn, she rounded back and wanted to go to the woods area with bleachers. It's always a major draw for her but after I told her to leave it, she came back, grabbed the track and nailed the finish.
• Some moments of really really good tracking with some frenzied exploration - I'd give her an A- overall

Something super cool I noticed at the finish - After feeding a LOT of chicken on the end article, I tossed some off to the side a few times to get her to reset and see what she'd do. She would initially stand up, and then you could see the wheels turning as if to say "Well I can go and search for that ONE tossed piece or I can lay down and indicate which is a guaranteed mega payout" and each time she chose to stay with the article!

After the track we had a nice game of fetch/toss and she calmly trekked back to the car. Happy girl!

Up next:  If I am able to track Monday, will probably just plan to do a quick novel location straight track to work on 'unload and focus'. Then I'm off to London Tues-Sun. Entry sent in for WSDTC 🤞