Tough Urban Track for Emma

Wednesday we went urban tracking for Tank and for Emma. A terrible day for newish dogs to urban and first time out this year. If Tascha hadn't taken the day off work to do this, we wouldn't have gone. We waited to mid-morning to begin, but it was sooooo cold and windchill was in the -20's, it sure wasn't near ideal. Then...we had to find locations, as ones we thought might be bare were still just covered in piles of snow. We decided after this to let the urban work go for a week and see if locations/weather had improved. Having said this, both Emma and Tank did pretty good. We were prepared to help them along but actually didn't have to step in many times at all.
Tascha had laid a very short "track" for Emma and already run it in another area of this property. She did quite well, I didn't catch up fast enough for many pics. there as I was laying the second track for Emma. We didn't wait long to age because of conditions, and Emma just worked along like a Trooper. Here, she has just made her first turn and moving towards pavement.

We were scrunched in this area and I have to say this was a poorly laid track that I did for her. She had crossed a driveway, and up onto this sidewalk and turned - correctly. What a good girl! The corner of this building is about 20' to the left and the high winds were rushing right at the corner, so going around both sides. Look at that nose!

Emma had moved up the other side of the building, but recovered and out across another driveway, up onto this tiny island and another turn. How hard is this?!!!! A car was directly in front, and I made the turn as shown in red, and she was dead on.....again, the wind is whipping directly towards this turn. She went briefly left, then right, at the cars, and then rushed right through between them.

Tascha had her line all rolled up as she wanted to work close to Emma and our lines were whipping around with the wind and picking up tons of junk, hard to work. Would have been a good day to just work on a 10' line and not have to worry about the excess. They had gone through another driveway between cars, an article (right on) and into a more open area where the scent likely had blown clear across (yellow lines) and she followed quite a way up, indicating loss of scent, but with a little line tension, back she moved towards the track.

Emma is working back to the track, and no doubt, the leather article scent was drawing her over.

I think Emma will be a great little working dog on hard surface. She's close to the ground to begin with, ha.ha. but she works slow and deliberate and concentrates on her job. Nothing distracts her when she is tracking. She worked like this on the TDX and is very tenacious and motivated. Really nice work in rotten conditions, with Tascha being very helpful and handling her so well and calmly.