Decided to give the new hip a try and put in a short (~120yrds total), young track for Mila to see where things stand after another long break. My hip did okay overall and Mila did great (though we both need to build our fitness back up)!
So an underlying theme for all my tracks is going to be trying to identify how arousal states influence Mila's tracking and figuring out ways to maintain the arousal state that drives, drive rather than suffocates it 😁. This ought to be interesting...
Mila typically comes out of the car gangbusters and excited to track and then sometimes, something happens along the way to snuff this out and she shuts down a bit (or a lot). After thinking this through and from some discussion's in Judi's Foundations classes and that podcast about arousal (can't remember the name), it started to seem like her checking out was from overstimulation/too much arousal. This is worth exploring. So, I want to try and keep the energy up but channeled - this is the part that will take some learning for me for sure.
Out of the car (she was amped) so to focus her a bit, I did 10 smallest possible loops (which helped). Then we went to the start flag and about 10 yrds from the start, I put the harness on and did 5 SPLs. She started (and maintained being) super focused and no smellsploration at the start...the only meandering was at one of the tall tufts of grass next to the track that she wanted to smell the calling card some other critter had left behind, but she went back to it in short order. LOS at turn 1, but relatively limited - overshot turn, checked left with head only, then looped back to leg 2. Found the article that was about 12 yrds from the turn and did the Mila special indication (standing) - briefly offered water (refused). We took a moment to play with the article (during which she downed and maintained article interest). She nailed T2 (I actually anticipated LOS here because it was on a downhill slope) and stayed focused down the last leg to the article (same Mila special followed by article play - again she downed during this). Offered and drank water. I switched clip from back to collar, did a few more reps of SPLs then removed harness.
It's difficult to see my scrawl so my pattern was S5W15*9/10 with * being food drop, article, or 5 scuffs. I wanted each leg to have at least one food drop OR one article with the rest of the reinforcement being scuff. Start (canvas glove) and End (wallet) article did not have food; with article (bandana) on leg 2 having food. T1 was scuff in/out and T2 was scuff in/walk out. I benefited from observing class on Sat so worked on keeping the line at 6 to 10ish feet.
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