March 9, 2023 - Back Woods @ Bryan Park (informative)

I did two short tracks in the woods (under story was mix of some open space, some thickets, lots of fallen logs).  Again, I set up "problem solving" situations for Mila with using the overshot turn where I walk about 5 steps beyond where I plan to turn.  I wanted to do the same "problem" at different ages to see what impact the aging has.  These were informative (as in lots of good observations) but not really sure what to do with the information 😏...

I continued to face perpendicular or opposite direction of track/turn and eyes closed at "smell stops" along track, at start, and at turns (when I could).  Lots of praise at food drops; articles - play at end.

Super motivated for both tracks with strong starts (though I'd like to increase that even more)... Note on starts - the past few tracks I realized that I had been scuffing too many starts so that when others have not scuffed the start in class, her starts got weaker.  I have started walking 10 - 15 steps and then scuffing - Judi - what's the next action here - make the "confirmation scuff" further away, reduce it to a couple steps; get rid of all together (I know that's the eventual goal - but when?)?

Track 1 - younger ~ 1hr 45min (running age in woods? I know woods keeps it "fresher" but by how much?)

Interesting observations - she likes to meander in the woods & chooses routes that don't always make sense (like looping around the large beech tree when the track next to it was clear w/out any notable icky footing).  Because the meandering, she misses intermediary articles  - Leg 2 had a glove that was missed in part because she was meandering and then my eyes were closed 😂) - Judi - Is there anything to be done to reduce meandering without losing motivation?

She ignored overshot steps at T1 for this track (not for track 2 w/ more age); LOS at T2 - glance at turn direction - check out opposite; return to turn & go down track.

 

 

 

Track 2 -  (~2 hrs 25 min)

More interesting observations - again, strong start (continued with walking 10 - 15 steps and then a short scuff ~ 5); she made an interesting choice at the second log she had to go over. Where the track went, the log was higher than I wanted her jumping, but too low to go under - so I did a turn along the log with a very short leg (not sure you can even count it as a leg) and then I went over at low/easy crossing.  I wanted to observe this one - so did turn opposite direction, but also kept glancing over shoulder so I could see what she did.  She checked out the initial straight direction (smelled over, smelled under, smelled a little left and little right - took her a couple min to be confident about direction and then followed the track - then smelled log where I went over it and decided to go around the end of it...about 8 steps from where I went over and then quickly made her way to the track.

At this overshot turn, she initially indicated the correct direction and took the turn, then decided to come back to the overshot steps and apparently found one particular scent molecule she wanted to follow around, so when she looped back from the overshot steps, she meandered through several small trees like she was inventing the pulley system such that by the time she was happily taking the turn again, I had to call her back for a minute to get us untangled. Once untangled enough, she "happily" continued down the leg to the article (the two gullies didn't seem to be a problem) with a nice indication.