"Scent Work" this afternoon...

Well, I'm afraid it's the closest we've come to "tracking" in a long while...This afternoon, I took Blast down the driveway, and set him up to run off ahead of me while I tossed (first) a glove to the right, and further on, tricking him again by throwing an iceball, I tossed a white piece of leather to the left. And we kept walking. Almost messed up with the leather piece, it didn't go far off the driveway. Light wind coming from the NNE, (shown in blue in some pics.) temp. -17C, sunny. Red arrows point out articles. Just a little nose game, I was amazed I was able to hide them from him going down there.
Shortly after we turned around to go back, I just calmly said "Go Find" and he was off! So here's what was interesting. Rather than head to the right, where the leather piece was, he was determinedly searching in the snow on the left. He was in and out, nose buried. I thought, this is strange for him, he often takes off and circles in ever-smaller circles and pinpoints something buried in the field under the snow weeks ago. I half expected him to pull something old out of there. So, looking at the picture below, maybe you can figure it out.

He was reluctant to leave this area, here is circling around and heading back into the same spot.

Problem was, I was freezing, bare fingers numb on the camera, and didn't want to wait terribly much longer. Eventually, I began to walk up the driveway, and got past where the article was lying. Meanwhile, he had worked back in the same area again, and finally came out.

And here, he has gone right past it, and is heading to where he turns off into the field. Something weird going on here, right?! I was getting so cold, I was close to pointing it out...

This shows where he took off and made a circle "past' where the article was. The large circle is normal, he comes back out on the driveway, moves down again below the article, and then back into the field to up to circle again which would take him past the article once more.

There's his first circle on the left, note the article. (blue arrows wind) Now note where he suddenly stopped and looks my way. He's picked up the scent and is about to cut the circle back.

And races (green line) back below and then up to the article. This little exercise was soooo interesting. Not what I was thinking would happen at all, but a lot of thinking...

So we played with this article a bit, I put it in my pocket and said again.."Find".

And this time, he went straight to the left, into the snow, and made a straight be-line to the glove. Night and Day! So what was going on....will I ever know....he's not talking!

Here he is coming out with the glove.

Blast dropped the glove as his nose had "discovered" the little piece of fox poop I had covered over with snow on the way out.

And then he brings it back to me for a wild and crazy tug session. Kind of fun, just wish we could get back to real tracking....soon, I hope.