River

Robious athletic field, 53F, Planned a top hat but that shape didn’t work with fields being used. Tried to use the walk food patterns. Image of actual track aged 45- 50 minutes. Start is at upper left yellow line and end article is lower right in the image with the slightly longer leg. I forgot to edit the photo with start flag and end article. Goals: nice start for dog and her human. Line mechanics….Letting line run on the turns, getting back up, noticing and reacting to LOS

Start tracks near Duluth trading store. Lots of people with dogs walk this area and let the dogs run in the field. Someone was leaving as I started putting in the tracks. Aged for 45 minutes. These were 3 left turns, one right. I am actually not sure if not having turns in the same direction is ok to do for the start track exercise. My hope is to tighten her initial start from the article/flag, as sometimes she Is not as direct doing an arc in front. Also would like me to wor

Top hat track laid by Betty. Had one blind turn, the others were marked with low flags. This felt pretty good and I kept calm even at the blind turn. Determine to watch River for LOS and investigating the area. She is good about being persistent if I am. It quick enough to let her have line and follow. Anne’s advice was to do a start track next. Link to video: https://youtu.be/jEUc6Y8rWZQ?feature=shared

Hidden Rock Park, 42F, 41% humidity, wind gusts diagonal across track for 3rd leg of her 225 yd total track. Aged an hour. This had some, 3, tennis ball distractions on the first leg, so I hoped to use leave it. Added food at change of surface as she hasn’t crossed from grass to road pavement, also at the gravel path. Third leg went along slightly higher grass. Video link: https://youtu.be/5fog4jwP-ME?feature=shared Positives: Lovely down indication to start and she accepted

Watched Judi’s video in an attempt to make sure I had the correct mechanics. Tried this exercise with food. Wandered in small space with River and said leave it. Then put food down by my foot. River stopped moving and stared at me. She did not go to the food. Tried just holding the food out. She did the same thing. If I gave her a release, she went to the food. Based on instructions I want the movement to me after I say leave it so next I’ll try this with a toy.

Hidden Rick park for distance track with one turn and dropped article just over halfway down the longer first leg. I hoped that the article on the track instead of using food would keep River on the track instead of checking out to the left and right. Positives: At the start River was cold, shivering but not from excitement and I probably should have had a fleece on her. She had a nice start with the article and I am trying to be smoother with my article pickup and tucking it

Distance track work continues. 44F 66%humidity, partly cloudy. Aged 1 hour. 2 turns , 1st leg short 50 yds but had puddles across part of it and 2nd leg long about 170 yds, leg 3 was short 50 yds. The Walked track without food drop as River did well on distance track the other day. First leg and turn went really well. She did not want to walk through the water but her head was up and she appeared to be focused on finding the scent again after each of the puddles. On to secon

River did stair steps up track with scuff out on 1st & 2nd turn then only walking for others. Arrow indicates final article placement. Aged 45 minutes. 46F, ~60% humidity River did a great job on this track. Her start article was missing in action but she went right to her track. And, I was really able to notice when she had LOS on her turns. Since the legs were about 50 yds, she didn’t wander off mid leg. Her down indication at the end was good. No video for this track. Next

Long first leg, 125 yds, over a small dip, ditch track total 225 yd. 44F, 1 mph wind, 69% humidity, cloudy No food on track as it wasn’t quite as long as I intended due to kids playing ball at far end of field. Also, she’s never had a problem in this small dip/ditch area. Track aged 45 minutes. Positives: Beautiful start from the article out on to the track line. Very dedicated to the track with only minor serving across the track path. Handled the dippy ditch without any pro

We had a track recovery exercise ! So great, loved this one, hoping it’s added to the training exercises. Since it had 2 turns I wanted to keep my head down, watch the dog and not look ahead to the where the turns or articles were located. Food drop in mid leg with walk only, no scuffing. Video link to YouTube https://youtu.be/FaNxu_KiJ_0?feature=shared Positives: River had nice down indication for all 3 articles. River recovered the track quickly after the mid leg article. S

Top hat track aged 1 hour; about 250 yds; 59F, no noticeable breeze; 45% humidity Legs 1&2 of track have clover groundcover. Objective was to see if different scuff, food at turns changes how River did at the turn. Turn 1: scuff&food in/out this was and felt ugly; plus she drifted left and I followed to get her back but then she pulled right a lot. After that turn I took a deep breath as we are supposed to have fun. Turn2: scuff in only River turned about a yard, ahead of the

65F, 59% humidity, light breeze going across first and last leg and then dog going into breeze on second leg. This was 2 right turn 175 yd total track aged 45 minutes . The start track with Duck took longer than expected. And, again, River encounters the unintended distraction from humans and canines. Leg 1 had soccer goal cage to the left 15 yds away, I did 2 food drops. Then as we tracked there were 2 leashed dogs playing and barking with kids and parent. River did an abso

Continued the scuff 5 in and out of the turn that we did at class. One good drop per leg. Intended to do only 2 legs but ended up with 3. Total track length was 215 yds. Positives, negatives & concerns, questions: On leg 3 there was a black piece of cloth almost on the track and then as we did the track there were people walking their 2 dogs towards us along the trees about 15 yds away. Neither distracted River . After her last left turn, she got distracted by the flattened d

We worked in the house and in backyard on a mix of randomly scattered old and a new articles, glove & cell phone case. The strategy Jenn recommended worked ! Both dogs ended up doing down indication for all the articles. They both look back at me and previously I told them to down. Now, they look, well Duck paws at it & then looks, but they drop into down as I’ve decided to look ahead and not at them. So, should I look at them or ahead or should it not matter? Starting to th

Sunny day and no significant winds, very dry only 28% humidity. Added 2 different glove articles into the 10 article drop. Our goal is for better down indication without prompting on Betty’s article track exercise. We did 3 rounds. On round 1, River did not down on her own for the newer scented white gloves. This got better on round 2&3. Overall she was much better at down indication than she’d been in class and the day before. Next article exercise will probably be the rando

Since River was so hesitant to Down indicate at clas without a prompt from me, we are working on article indication per MAM’s advice. very windy and gusty day with the wind going mostly across the line of articles. I also set out some different articles , old cell phone cases, in the mix with gloves,socks on dirt. This was not smart on my part. River hesitated at the first article so I had to prompt her and put my hand on her back. On ward where she gave the first cell case a

Post class note with her track video. We had practiced article games and she was doing her down indication without a prompt at the start, all the ones in between(10), end article on Judi’s article game and oops I dropped it game. 11/14/25 last Judi’s article game before class https://youtu.be/ilFBrHIv96Y?si=QCVPImCtMUNKMRrz So, on her tracks at class she totally made a liar out of me and required prompting. We will continue to practice these games as instructed by Anne and Ma

Hidden Rock Park, sunny, breezy, and 65F but felt hotter. Set of 4 article tracks with right turns. Last year this was an empty field but the humans have figured out that the can use it for a sport so lacrosses goal nets are there….very sad but it gives me more double line up options against the trees in the background. Video links to T1, 3 & 4. I tried to start the video with my watch and that didn’t work for video of T2. T1 began near the dog park and I should’ve had a pl

Forgot to mention that in addition to food drop near surface changes I also did scuff across the change and scuffed out of the turns. Today will be start track so additional note later.

Track in Powhatan park area of housing development with gravel path throughout. Practiced change of surface from grass to gravel with food drops before and after crossing gravel path. Track used 3 left turns and 3 surface changes. Breeze blowing across the longer first leg and last leg of track in 64 F, sunny day. River hesitated to down at the start. Ok, will work some article exercises. She did down indicate mid track for an article that I accidentally dropped when laying t