10/9/23

Huguenot Park soccer field; 68 F, dry short grass

S5 W20 F10 on 2 turn track (90 degree left; open right)

A dog ran up to me as I was putting in start flag and article and circled me. I kept the start in that location and the track went at a right angle to that dog's path. Considered a different walk pattern but kept at my intended one , see above. The rest of the field was empty. Then, walking back to get River, cars are arriving to drop off the girls for soccer. And, they start warming up on the center edge of the field. River gets an unintended distraction challenge.

My intent was a simple 2 turn track for River. Well, that wasn't the way the track turned out. We approach the start, River’s looking around in the immediate and sniffing I presume. She looks off into the area where the dog headed and then her head turned towards the girls warming up...soccer balls are rolling on the ground. Fortunately, River already knows that she can't pick them up and she isn't as fond of dribbling them.

I have her sit and put the line on her back. She stands and goes to the article and downs. I found it interesting that she was laying with her back to the distractions. She started out in her slow easy pace. Tending to hang 1-2 feet off to the left of the track. I moved to be directly behind her and it did get her to be more on top of the track. Before the turn, she picked her head up and I almost failed to stop soon enough as she was looking left , but I froze and she turned her front in that direction but then put her head down and went straight a few more feet to turn close to the actual turn. On second leg she did skip several food drops. She went through the turn with her nose down, didn't raise head in direction of the turn, but this was an open turn. As she went to far, her head did come up and she was checking out the people, soccer balls. Decided that she'd look for her track and she did just course only to the right to find the track. She has a much more subtle pull than Duck, so the lighter line is help for me. She is a bit more intense when she locks in on the article. She was about 10 ft away from it today. I really wish that she'd swing her tail in the flat arch that she uses when finding things off leash, but she doesn't.

She did incredibly well with the surprise distraction. I had planned to throw her ball for her afterwards, but she only got a food reward as the soccer people wouldn't have been happy with River running around.

Since she didn't hit the open angle turn, I will give her another track with this type of turn., keeping the W20 F10 as this was the first time for this pattern.