12/22/23

Horseshoe Lake Succasunna, NJ

River S5W50F25 plus food drop just across from pavement crossings. New area for River to track, but soccer field, short dry grass. 45 F, no wind. Planned on the new surface intro with 2 pavement path crosses. Final leg had goose poop droppings as another unintentional challenge.

At the first crossing on first leg, she went across easily, got the food but seemed interested in sniffing around. Thought she was following the foot traffic flow, but she also sniffed around and peed. Then she did a circle around me for the track, which she seemed to catch to the left of the track path. On the second crossing on 3rd leg, she just followed her track. These were all left 90 degree turns, which she usually likes so those were supposed to be easy. For the most part she was fairly efficient on turns, although she did circle around behind me on 2 of them. She always circles clockwise...which I feel may be an important detail, but I'm not sure why yet. So, with the circle she lands closer to the actual track, if she's gone past the turn point.

I did feed out more line so I was at 20 + feet for a lot of the track.

On one leg she paused and downed to indicate for a white piece of paper, cardboard but as she was down, she got up and kept going. She has not yet had multiple articles on a track. After end article down, she enjoyed finding the fetch ball.

Next, start tracks.