Although Blast looks good at the scent pad, he had a very wobbly start for the first 1/3 of the first leg. The "veg" surface is pretty sparse, but no idea what was really happening. Emmas' in the same location was the same, sparse and not a good beginning on her first leg. Of course, we've no idea if anything had happened ahead of us arriving at this location to cause any problems. Just odd how they both struggled for a while, and then did well.
Blast is just starting to really work along the track on the first leg here. I feel starts and getting past that first corner are so important to the dogs. Certainly in a test, a poor beginning doesn't help with the confidence.
Ah, here we go. I've let out the line as he's working well along the second leg.
And that must be an article! Obvious in the picture, but Blast is still not "wanting" to pause long at articles. I have to walk up quickly, shortening up on line as I go, to make sure he doesn't continue before I reach the article.
Ok, so let's just get going, is his attitude.
And again, in this area of the next two turns and two legs, I swear he knew exactly where the next article was and following the actual track was not his priority. If he was loose, I am sure he would have headed to the next article. This is how he works at home on walks, taking off and finding lost things in the field or forest. So as amazing as I find it when he does this, it has certainly created some issues for us in training for CKC tracks.
He is now working along about 2' left of the laid track and approaching a left turn out on the veg. surface.
A brief pause at the wood article and I rushed up to him on shortened line digging a treat out of my pocket. 
I asked for a "down" and he did, much to my surprise, with his paw on the article. I feel I'm walking a thin line here. He wants to keep going, I'm asking, but not insisting if it doesn't happen quickly, for a better indication. I don't want to de-motivate him and am trying to do this quickly, so he can get moving again.
He popped back up quickly, and took the treat. Tascha did a good job in getting these pictures quickly so I could see this. Immediately, he turned back to the track.
Onto the gravel and nearing a right turn.
Blast seems to like hard surfaces better than veg. Perhaps with his "style" he just finds it more interesting, having to actually 'work' it. He was 'dead on' along this last leg. I really love to see him working this way.
And this is certainly a confidence booster for the handler...me! Nose down all the way. 
Final article, nice work. I'm very happy with any hard surface work he's been doing.Now if I can just convince him to work like this on the vegetated surfaces!!!
The first part of this track was truly awful, with me having no idea what he was doing, what was going on, only that he was not appearing to work on the track at all.
After we finished this track, I decided to go to another location and do another very short track with a good vegetative beginning to see what the outcome of that might be.
