Tracking with Grey – Week 2, Day 5
January 10th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
We did the same tracks with Grey as we did with Slate yesterday.
Only it was a bit of an adventurous outing, today. Obviously I was tempting fate by calling things ‘slick’, yesterday.
We had just finished the first 3 tracks and I was half-way through laying the next set of 3, when the farmer came driving around the bottom of the field in his tractor, with a plough attached. Thinking that he meant to plough the field today, we decided to move to the field next door. We had collected all our posts and were just walking out of the field, when the farmer came driving around to cut us off and opened his door. (Ominously, gangster-style…)
I nominated Adam for farmer-dialoguing.
Turns out this field which we’d believed to be Open Access – and therefore useable by the public – was in fact, not. And the farmer threw us out. (Well, he said ‘if you’d asked, I would have let you – but since you didn’t ask…’.)
So we then traipsed to another, smaller field next door – which was Open Access. And, because it was smaller, we couldn’t lay all 3 tracks in a line, but had to walk back to the start of the field (to get the right wind direction) before laying the final 320 yard track each time.
But we got it all done. And Grey was great.
Then it was a bit of a mad rush home, because I had to be somewhere an hour later…
Tracking against the South Downs
Tracking with Slate – Week 2, Day 5
January 9th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Tracks today were 80, 160 and 320 yards long.
This set of 3 was repeated 3 times. And aged 15 minutes before the start of each set of three.
I accidentally set off 4 minutes early on the last set of 3, so they were only aged 11 minutes.
Slate did great, although the ground was quite hard today and I often couldn’t see if we were on the track or not. (I knew we were, because every now and then, she would find the food drops Adam had left.)
Moreover, we actually get the tracks done a lot faster than in Week 1: By this point in Week 1, we were out for around 4 hrs (!). Whereas today, it took us 2 hrs.
Why? Well, Adam lays the first 3 tracks one after another, whilst I wait and time 15 minutes. At 15 minutes, I start, regardless of where Adam is. (Usually he has finished laying the last track and is on his way back.) Adam walks back to the start along the edge of the field, whilst I am tracking. Then he follows me, collecting the poles. On the last, longest, track, he only collects the first 2 poles – (I bring the last one back): He returns to the start and begins to lay the next 3 tracks, whilst I am finishing the last track of the previous 3. (Still with me?). He times the moment he sets out.
I then return to the beginning along the tracks we’ve just tracked – and by then Adam is halfway through laying the next set of 3, and he lets me know (by phone!) how much time we have left. We then have about 5 minutes to get our breath back, before starting the next set of 3. It’s all very slick, now!
Which is all to say: We are both doing something almost all the time now, and there is much less boring waiting around for the track-layer than there was in Week 1.
Tracking with Grey – Week 2, Day 10
January 4th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Today we did the same tracks Slate did a couple of days ago, but with Grey.
We also put into practice the suggestions from the Glen Johnson book, regarding improving the motivation to start the track – as I said we needed to, last time Grey tracked.
These were: To triple lay the first 20 paces, and to put a food drop at 5 paces and at 20 paces. The rest of the track, to continue as normal. (We are still using food drops at the frequency Johnson recommends.)
Grey had no problems starting today, however – she was raring to go, even before she knew we’d changed anything. In trying to understand why this was, Adam suggested that her confusion and lack of focus in Jersey, had been due to the fact that we’d been leaving her in the car whilst we tracked Slate, first. Grey had been frustrated by this and had barked her head off, knowing that she was missing out on something. She was then stressed, by the time it was her turn to track – and had found it difficult to concentrate, as a result. This all sounded pretty plausible.
However: It’s quite likely that, if we do ever get to enter a trial with them, there will be an amount of waiting in the car beforehand whilst other dogs are tracked – and then having to come out immediately and track. So probably these are conditions we’d be advised to get the dogs to work under.
The other issue today was, again, one quite similar to Slate’s: On a couple of the articles, Grey failed to recognise that they were articles and ‘blinked’ them. One was a short piece of computer cable, with a knot tied in it. The other was the metal lid of a tin. Both of these articles the dogs have successfully retrieved from a search square we did at the weekend, so they weren’t even ‘fresh’ articles – they had retrieved them previously. And both were well-scented with my scent, as I held them and moved them around in my hand before placing them down. My hands were very cold though and it was extremely windy, perhaps my hands are not leaving enough scent on the articles?? (Am I making excuses here?) (Does anyone know: If body scent dissipates quicker than track scent, do articles hold body scent? Or does it dissipate from them, the same as it does from the track? In which case, what are dogs scenting to identify the article?)
Both dogs will immediately pick the article up if we say ‘Give’ or point to it, but if we just wait there and don’t allow them to progress any further, they sometimes don’t appear to acknowledge that these things are articles – despite the fact that they will readily pick them up from search squares, or when doing clicker retrieve ‘pick-ups’.
I think we have been a bit remiss in varying our articles, before this, and we are paying the price for this now. We had previously been using almost exclusively large chunks of leather from a cut-up shoe. We then completely changed all articles a few (tracking) days ago, and this has caused some problems for both dogs. So I think the moral of this is to get the dogs used to expecting very different articles by varying them continually. We tried to play with a few, today, but sometimes they’re not very suitable for playing-with (being small or hard or something).
Tracking with Slate – Week 2, Day 10
January 2nd, 2012 § 4 Comments
Tracks today: 40, 80 and 160 yards, repeated 3 times and aged for 15 minutes.
Slate was great at the actual tracking, today, and is having absolutely no problems with the ageing of the tracks. But we had a couple of misadventures with some articles: One was a small bungee cord, which she firstly just sniffed over and did nothing about. I said nothing, during this, since I’m not going to be able to know when she’s found an article on an actual track. Then she picked it up, but instead of giving it to me, she dropped it to sniff something else (very weird behaviour, for her). When I finally said ‘Give’, it was as if she suddenly realised this was an article and gave it to me immediately. Since the articles can be very small on the more advanced tracks, she can’t rely on me to see them: She needs to do this without my prompting ‘Give’.
I’m wary of this kind of thing, since I’ve heard that Weimaraners have a tendency to be ‘track-happy’: To find following the track more rewarding than finding the articles, so they can end up doing the entire track correctly but without acknowledging any articles! To prevent this, I try to keep the tastiest bonanza rewards for the articles, firing treat after treat into her mouth when we find one – and then having a great game of tug; I try to make a really big impact on her, every time we find an article.
Then, another article blew away before we reached it at the end of the track. Adam said it was a piece of black wire/rubber. When I realised there was no article there, I whipped one of the previous ones out of my pocket and threw it on the ground for her to retrieve (!).
We all got home, and had lunch, and then Adam suddenly realised he couldn’t find his iPhone. Using the ‘Find My Phone’ app on his computer, we located it…. in the middle of the field we had been tracking in!!!! We think it must have fallen out of his pocket whilst he was lying on the ground with Grey and I was tracking Slate.
Thanks be, Apple, for ‘Find My Phone’. Adam has now driven off to find it…
Tracking – Week 2, Day 9
December 27th, 2011 § 3 Comments
Tracks today were 20, 40 & 80 yards long and aged 10 minutes.
Slate had no problem with them. Grey, on the other hand, is having some difficulties at the start. I’m not sure why this is, but she ends up standing there, eating grass and admiring the view.
Adam waits a while, since obviously we can’t force her to track. Encouragement doesn’t seem to work: He runs his hand through the grass at the starting post and says ‘What’s this?’, but Grey just munches on grass and daydreams.
There is a ‘trouble-shooting’ section at the back of the book and there is some help on this issue, there – but I’ve left the book back home…. No matter, since we’ve now reached about as much as we can do here, in the small Jersey fields!
Tracking – Week 2, Day 8
December 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Tracks today were still baby tracks of 10, 20 & 40 yards and aged 8 minutes.
Grey again seemed to have no idea what she was doing on the first track and then suddenly seemed to remember. Slate was great throughout.
One thing I’ve noticed, since we’ve been ageing the tracks these past couple of days, is that the dogs are tracking much more footstep-to-footstep, and are much less likely to want to use the wind to help.
I’m assuming this is because body scent dissipates quickly, but is easier to follow, whereas track scent sticks around a lot longer, but needs more work. So I’m understanding this development as a good one, indicating that the body scent has dissipated somewhat and they are now starting to follow track scent.
We won’t be doing any tracking on Xmas Day (!) so it might be a couple of days before we continue now!
Hope you all have a great Xmas!
Tracking – Week 2, Day 7
December 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
It looks like the point of Week 2 is to repeat the distances of Week 1, but with the tracks being aged more.
So today we tracked 5, 10 & 20 yards – which felt like nothing, after the 400 yards we were doing at the end of the first week. Since we’re back down to these distances, we can track both dogs on the same day.
The crucial differences from last week are: The track-layer lays all 3 tracks, before the dog tracks them. The 3 tracks are still repeated 3 times, but they are laid all at once, each time.
The other (related) difference is that the tracks are aged. Today only by 5 minutes. We start the timer from the moment the track layer steps out on the first track.
Yet again, this tracking programme shows a really good knowledge of learning theory: We are making one criteria harder (age of track – and potentially the scent which the dog is tracking, since the older the track gets, the more likely it is that the dog will have to follow ‘track scent’ instead of body odour) – but we are simultaneously making another element easier – length of track and frequency of rewards (by way of finding articles).
Both the dogs did well, although it’s always hard to tell if they’ve ‘got it’ on tracks this short, because no sooner have they started then they’ve come across an article and finished it: There’s no time for them to get into their stride.
Grey had no idea what she was supposed to be doing on her first track, and stood there eating grass. (I think both dogs were a bit confused by our being in Jersey, as we’ve never done tracking in Jersey before.). But after finding the first article at 5 yards, she realised it was the same thing we’d been doing in the UK, and was great.
tracking with Grey – Day 6
December 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
We did it!!! Yeah!!! Ok, we cut one track out of the last repetition, so we did 8 out of the 9 planned tracks. We thought Grey was getting tired and we didn’t want to push it.
We were completing the same tracks Slate did yesterday. Grey was great: She had a terrible first track (160yards), whereby she appeared to have forgotten absolutely everything and to have no idea what she was doing – but from then on, she was great. Perhaps she just needed a warm-up.
She wasn’t even moving side-on to the tracks, like she did on Day 5, but was right on the track.
Weird event of the day: Whilst I was laying the 400yard track, and Adam was waiting with Grey at the starting post, some crazy woman came up to him and said, aggressively: ”What are you doing?”. She then went on with things like: ”But you’re not hunting are you?”… Eventually Adam refused to speak to her and kept repeating “have a nice Sunday”. (He didn’t say that, no, we weren’t hunting at that moment, but we do at other times!!) She was a raving anti-hunt campaigner – and we could have been anyone – we could even have been the farmer, hunting on our own land and getting accosted by her.
Anyway, in a more relaxed fashion, we’re onto Week 2. Considering it’s taken us about a month to complete Week 1, we will probably be finished with the programme in around 5 years…
tracking with Slate – Day 6
December 17th, 2011 § 2 Comments
This was the final day of Week 1 for Slate, on the Glen Johnson tracking training program. Today the 3 tracks were 160, 320 and 400 yards long – and these distances were repeated 3 times, totalling again 9 tracks. The food drops have been reduced from every 10 paces, too. (Can’t remember the schedule off the top of my head, but it’s something like 10 paces, and a drop, then walk on 15 paces, and a drop, then walk on 20 paces…. and so on, with 5 more steps each time.)
Slate was brilliant, and coped fine with the reduced food drop schedule.
We’re all totally knackered and I’m starting to think we DO need to reduce the number of tracks per day – at least when we’re doing distances like these, perhaps not with the smaller distances: We went out at around 10.30am and left for home at 2.30pm, so I think it took us around 4 hrs. Admittedly much of that is standing around – either waiting for Adam to lay the track, or on Adam’s part, waiting for us to track it. But then, once we’ve done the tracks, we have to slog back to the car through muddy fields and up hills…
We’re supposed to do exactly the same with Grey, tomorrow: We really wanted to complete this first week before we go to Jersey for Xmas with my family on Tuesday – and tomorrow is the last day we can do it, since Monday we will be packing, cake baking and more. The fields in Jersey are really small, and there’s no way we could cover these distances there – so we won’t be able to continue over Xmas, unless we do Day 6 with Grey tomorrow. If we can just get through this first week, the distances for Week 2 are tiny (starting at 5, 10 and 20 yards), and we could easily do these in Jersey fields.
But when we next reach these sort of distances again, I’m all for reducing the number of tracks per day!
