1.2 Urban Lawn | Training in the Rain
Date: Aug 1, 2024
Track Layer: Paul the husband
Cross Track Layer: Lorie
Location: Our Property
Weather: Muggy, had been raining all morning
Wind: Nearly no wind.
Track Lengths: 15 yds., 30 yds. and 50 yds.
Training day dawned, and with it came rain. Is that okay? I know we need to practice in all types of weather, but since we’re just starting, should we really be training in the rain? Does it make it harder for the dog or maybe even easier? After much debate with myself and a quick message to a friend, I decided it was fine. Thanks to my procrastination, we caught a break in the rain just as we were heading out.
Next question: where to go? I live on 2 acres, so we have a nice mowed field right here. Should I train on my own field or head to a commercial one? My concern was that Rumor plays here a lot. Will she be able to switch into tracking mode, or will she get distracted and chase crows? After another internal debate, I decided to use our fields. Since it’s not a commercial field, my tracklayer (aka my husband) would lay the track while I created a contamination track according to the diagram.
For this session, I used her 6ft leash. According to the book, I shouldn’t follow more than 6ft anyway, and this would help avoid some of the leash handling issues I had the first time around with the 20ft leash. Good decision.
Session 1.2.1 kicked us off with a bang. My tracklayer did a fantastic job, getting straighter each time! Rumor and I also did pretty well. She had her nose on the track, tons of motivation, and overall, it was a good start. The video showed her first time off-track was precisely where I had laid the cross track.
Session 1.2.2 went a bit downhill. This bad second track seems to be a recurring pattern—the middle child of tracking. No major tracklaying issues except the missing start treat, which Rumor either got when I wasn’t paying attention, or it was never really dropped by the tracklayer. We both have opinions on which of the two options is most likely 🙂 There was a lot of distraction with a jealous Border Collie crying in the background, which could have caused some focus issues. Rumor didn’t seem to know what she was doing on this track. She didn’t start the track like she has been doing. I had to point out the start treat, and once she ate it, she began to follow. This could have been due to our confusion at the beginning with the missing start treat, as she spent a lot of time looking for it before we realized it wasn’t there and took her off the track to place it. She came way off the track many times, which she also hadn’t done on previous tracks. My videographer struggled to capture this one as a spider ran up his leg partway through the track—an issue that I can’t blame him for having to address! This was probably for the best.
Session 1.2.3 was a tracklayer challenge. The tracklayer is having some difficulty with the longer tracks! “How far was that?” “When am I supposed to drop the treat?” He found some animal poop right on the track at 30 yards. What do you do with that? Do you lay a new track or take your stake and try to fling the poop to the side, breaking it into little pieces that scatter and create their own contamination track? My tracklayer chose the latter 🙂 After laying the track, while circling back to the start, he decided to walk back to the track and clear out the rest of the poop. My response was probably a bit demotivating. I need to watch that. We tracked it anyway because that’s the pattern we’ve fallen into. I placed the once-again missing start treat and took Rumor to the line. Off we went. This track was an improvement over 1.2.2. When I reviewed the video, I saw that she came off the track several times but got back on. Some of the off-track moments were near the contamination tracks (the one I laid and the poop trail), which, I believe, is expected and part of the training.
Evaluation: Overall, I’m not sure. This is when it would be nice to have a coach who can give feedback from their perspective. It didn’t seem like an improvement over the first session, but there were contamination tracks, longer placement between treats (10 yards this time), longer tracks, poop, and many more challenges that didn’t exist the first time around. The leash handling was a bit improved, I think.
Rumor hits the track fast, usually walking past the treat. Sometimes she catches the scent and circles back; other times, I hold her there with the lead to ensure she gets it. I believe this is what I’m supposed to do.
Below is a video of track 1.2.1. Enjoy the show!
