Windy UTDX Track

The location I had planned for Tuesday was completely covered by Canada Geese! Having done one there last year at this time (migration), I wasn't about to walk on or dodge so much disgusting squishy poop again...so moved to second choice. Turned out to be very good and worthwhile. A couple of good distractions, and extremely high wind off Lake Nipissing in North Bay.
Trust had a very, very long first leg in grass, except for this little sidewalk crossing. Lots of cars, people, dog walkers, ducks and gulls out; track aged 3 1/2 hours.

We had just finished standing and waiting for a man and a little dog walking towards us on a flexi, and dog having frequent 'pit stops'. I decided to wait, rather than push her through, as it was also barking at us, annoying, and he seemed fixated on watching us. Trust was distracted, and then as you see with the broken yellow line, she tried to go over where the dog had "been".

I turned and took this picture after they went by, and darned if he didn't turn around and come back behind us, more or less following along behind. I had to sternly remind Trust a few times to get back to work, as she was a little uptight about them coming up behind us.

She had found a wood article earlier on this leg, you can sese the wind is blowing the line across to the left. I made the turn purposely ahead of what was obvious...the change and a crack all the way across the road. She turned to cross, and a nice driver stopped and waited for us to run over the road. She was nearly right on the track across the road, and hitting the other side. I was surprised how close she was due the winds, which were then strong behind us. Always windy by the lake, but had increased immensely from laying time.

The wind whips across here, over the steps and down into a tunnel area. Quite a difficult place to work in even without high winds. I was standing on top and without the wind, this line would have been a straight line down to her. The plastice article was blown about 3' to the right on the second step down, from where I had left it. She made two circles here, one not far enough, one past it, and then came back up to get it. It was white plastic, so couldn't be seen.

Before this shot, she had to work out on an acute angle from the last picture and curve into a paved walk/bike path along the road and then turn up this hill of sparse veg. The gray car is now parked right over the track into a large gravel parking lot. Again, the wind (blue arrows).

When we reached the car, the lady rolled down her window and called to Trust. I told her we were working and the track went under her car....she was going to move it...I said, no, if she was still there, we would come back and tell her all about what we were doing. The track makes a left turn in the parking lot, and there's an article along the next leg.

And there it is, a metal article which she had almost gone by, as she was following the scent close to the fence. At the last minute, she turned her head and rushed to it. I think she wants a treat, don't you?! She got one!

Further along, the gravel turned to asphalt and we went between two large cement dividers hitting strong gusts again. Look at that line, even Trust looks like she's being blown sideways.

This was not a strict corner but a long sweeping turn following the driveway now, in the middle.

She had moved towards some grass and another fence at this point, but was surprisingly quite close to the track.

All of a sudden, she turned and trotted over to the track and just zoned right in to the article.

All things considered, especially the unexpected high wind, I was pretty impressed with her today....well, she always impresses me, but she seemed really happy about working on this track today with the difficulties. The only issue really was the strange man and his dog, she was too focused on them. We did go back up the hill and had a nice talk with the lady in the car who was most impressed about all this 'tracking stuff'. Had I seen the man later, I also would have spoken to him. He may have just been curious and not realized that he and his dog were a bit of a problem for us.

Emma and Tascha on a short TDX

There were almost no pictures where you could actually see Emma on this track, she was lost in the deep and thick growth. Honest...there really is a dog at the end of the line! In the picture above, Emma is just approaching a deep ditch -down and up- through some brush and then immediately across a dirt road and into another ditch to a separate field. She loved it!

See!!!! That's Emma! Her last field was short growth; she really had to work hard to push through the majority of her track. They both did a great job, Emma working steadily and Tascha reading her really well. Wet again!

A nice track today with Rosemary & Reece

One of our lovely local fields to train in again. Lush, thick and wet growth, almost too difficult to walk through for smaller dogs and short-legged people (me!). I put down a long "tophat" (TD) track today for Reese. It was aged 50 mins. and some drizzle began just as she started.

As you can see, Rosemary is doing a really nice job with her line-handling and reading Reese well at corners. Reese has changed so dramatically in the last few weeks and just works steadily, nose down, on her track.

Rosemary is right on the corner, and about to follow Reece. She had overshot a little, straight ahead, and just finished circling back and beginning to pull along the track.

Here they are moving quickly, at a nice steady pace, along the last leg toward the article.

And there it is! Reece just plopped down on her article, waiting for Rosemary to come up. Very nicely done!

Soaked to the bone, Emma.

Emma had a "short" TDX type track on Wednesday. It was across from the cackling sandhill cranes, which caused her some pause at her start. It also turned out to be in the adjoining field where Blast and I ran into the deer leg last week. The rain began about the same time Emma started her track, and it never let up.

And guess what?! I believe this was another part of the deer from last week. This one was about 6' to the side of the track, and Emma never noticed it. I was actually hoping she would, as Tascha didn't think Emma would leave a bone on the track, after hearing Blasts' story. It would have been interesting to see what Emma did.

Emma is just entering the top of a very deep ditch. At this time I told Tascha she could help her across the bottom if "need be". It was very mucky and had water in the bottom of the ditch, and very weedy all the way. When I laid this track, it was difficult climbing up the far side into the next field.

Almost to the top on the far side. I love obstacles like this and so do the dogs! Both fields were in lovely condition.

I felt badly for Emma. She was just so wet, and had begun to shivver a bit. The temperature was much cooler than we've had for so long, and it was a pretty tough track for her..almost all of it was in fairly short grass, but by this time it was just pouring. She's a tough little dog.

Back to Birds!!!

Not the greatest shot, but put on as perspective to size. The hawks have arrived as they follow the blue jays in early fall. What a racket it is here! People think we live in the "quiet countryside"..ha.ha.ha. We have krestels hunting the jays as well, as I always know when they are here due to the screaming jays. I swear they play "cat and mouse" or "bird and hawk" with them.

This is a very photogenic merlin who is just biding his time, it seems, waiting for a careless jay.

I took these pictures from the bedroom window, and he obviously saw me there a number of times. It didn't seem to bother him at all, I wish the kestrel would slow down a little as he just zooms through and so far, too fast to get a picture.

Sandhill Cranes in Tracking Fields

The VERY noisy sandhill cranes are back, not sure why they are more "grey" right now, and earlier in the year they were quite "brown"....perhaps feed, or type, I really don't know.

Although not trying to scare them off, as soon as I got out of the truck, they began to take flight...however, I did want to try and get pictures of this......

We don't see a lot of them, but I've heard where the flocks are huge, everyone dislikes them intently. They are loud, they croak and cackle and some people describe the noise they make like chalk on a blackboard. I find them very interesting, if odd...

This is just a small part of the flock. There were about 20. I think the two on the right are immature birds, and they seem to be more of the brownish colour. They are in a field where grain had been grown and not really in one of the tracking fields we were using.

New Title! Carmspack Blast TD

Blast earns his Tracking Dog Title in Sudbury on Sunday, September 6th. He was 16 months of age on the 4th. Nice fields and very wet conditions from the 2 days previous. And COLD!!! After such a terribly long hot spell, it was quite a shock. I'm wearing a winter jacket.

He had just dug down into a clump of clover and found his glove and then just stood over it until I came up. I think he wondered why it was buried in the clover clump!

After I held it up to show the judge, we played tug a little with it...and then I had to try and keep it from him.....ha! You cannot play too much with it after the dog indicates at a trial, and the last thing you want to do is to lose it!

We stopped on the way home and took a few pictures, as it was raining too hard to take them with the judge at the trial presentations. This was unfortunate, as it's nice to have the presentation photo with the judge.

I think we took about 20 pictures to finally get a couple where he wasn't jumping around. He really wanted his glove - you normally get to keep the final article if you pass the test, and he knew I was trying to hide it at that time to keep it in one piece. He gave me heart failure a few times, as he kept turning around to the judges and tracklayer wanting to say 'hi'. But he did a good job and now has his first tracking title.