Tracking fun
For the first time ever in our four seasons of tracking, Muggins here has actually put in practice tracks during the week. There are a couple of sport and rec. centres in my area that have ovals and open space around them. These work well for laying tracks during the day on a weekday, since there are very few people using them.
This year, as mentioned before, Amika seems to have settled down a bit and is easier to work with. It began to happen at the end of last year, but it is dramatically different coming back after the summer break. She can focus on me, she can restrain herself enough to wait for things to be done. But there are still limits. I put her harness on in the car, and ignore the old school (“it must be done this way”) trackers. It is just about impossible to get a harness on a 30kg dog that is spinning in circles and lunging at the start flag!
On about our third tracking practice outing I passed a man out for a walk with his dogs as I walked back from the end of the track. The three dogs were pitbull types, but they were well behaved and sticking pretty close to their guy. The track was a big arc that looped back to the car, and the man was heading the way I’d come, so I knew there might be some dog conflict. I went and spoke to him, letting him know that I was going to be following the stakes with bits of tape on with my dog and that if any of his dogs picked up a sock, to just put it back where they’d got it. So my articles might end up contaminated and not quite where I’d put them, though he assured me that his dogs wouldn’t mess with them.
I let the track age to 30 minutes, hoping the guy would clear off. If I hadn’t needed to meet a quarantine officer at the airport and pick up a falcon, I’d have aged it longer! Amika was ready, harnessed up and wearing her “This dog is busy, do not disturb” vest. I was ready with my gloves on and tracking lead gathered. As usual, she had the sniff and pee ritual next to the car and we headed for the start. And who should be crossing the oval at right angles to my first leg? Yep, the guy and his dogs. Fortunately they were more than 100 metres out, and the guy couldn’t help but notice the loony shepherd barking and pulling in his direction. She gets excited on the start anyway, but having dogs out there as well, she couldn’t contain herself. It was a little trickier than usual getting the lead from collar to harness.
Once they were at least 50m clear of the track I let Amika start. She put her nose down between looking at them, but she is so focussed on a track. When her head came up for the dogs, I held her back, when her head went down to the track I allowed her to move forward. Once we’d covered the first 20m (and the well behaved pitties grew steadily more distant) she was sucked into the track. She DID check out their cross tracks throughout the track, but stayed committed to my scent. She even picked up a couple of articles without too much verbal prodding from me. And the other dogs had left them alone. I was thrilled to see how well she performed in the face of such a huge distraction.
