#tracking dog

tell me to do the yard work , tell me what to do , give me the tasks that need to get done , when they need to be done, how do to them.

im also a tracking dog !!

guess who successfully tracked a genet, with no prior training or instruction? my darling doofus did!! (i myself have been professionally trained in wildlife tracking, though.)

cannot express how proud i am of this dog & how far she's come in showing her intelligence & abilities over the last year.

(not a photo of where she tracked, but just look how chuffed she is with herself on this hike!)

Thorn, tracking test 4 rating: good. Thorn struggled with starting in the face of hundreds and hundreds of sheep coming over to see if were are feeding them. He had a really nice stretch then struggled in the face of some roos. Another nice stretch then struggled at the sight of distant cars. Then honed in. It would have been a lower mark but he did go above and beyond in finding every single article. I think Thorn is feeling confused and demotivated from the lack of live tracks lately. So will have to organise with other people to set up some short sweet love tracks to motivate him again. I also haven’t done a lot of tracking training with Thorn, letting his innate instincts do a lot of work. But now it is time to set up some structured simulations to let him learn how to puzzled out those scenarios.

Thyme, tracking test 9 rating: good

Very impressed with Thyme. T9s are fucking hard and he pretty much breezed through it. Our track had been rained on and was on a plateau getting lots of wind. He cut a corner and overshot a couple of others. Quartering widely because of the wind. But he kept a brisk pace and worked hard the whole time. Very efficient. He found all 4 article and did some beautiful back to back acutes. Blind start. Once he gets his T10 that’s it, he won’t be able to track in trials anymore. That will be a shame he does like the challenge compared to the track and search.

Both tracks were in drought-ridden bare paddocks that are basically hard compressed dirt that leaves little disturbance and nothing for the odour to catch on. It is not easy to work on those.

Death Haunts the Dark Lane