Another new endeavor! Well, not totally new. We did start tracking a little last year but weren't able to devote enough time to it so we dropped from the group. But this year we're committed. Maybe in more ways than one! We'd been tracking for a couple of weeks and I thought Dudley was doing well. But then we tracked with a group and things were totally different! My remedial student came out and showed himself! When we track alone, Dudley does very well. He usually goes right down the track straight to the glove. But then I started seeing him just walk to the flag so started putting the flag at a different location than the object he was supposed to find. That seemed to encourage him to actually follow the track. He started putting his nose the in grass and I actually thought he was following the scent. Then we went to group. OMG! Where was my Dudley and who's this dog???

"Oh look! There's a bug!"
"Hey I think there might be a rodent down this hole!"
"Gee whiz would you look at this poop? Wonder what dropped it here? And where do you think it went? Let's go see..."

His ears were at alert and his tail was going a mile a minute. Our instructor said he was pursuing "extra curricular" tracking, an activity I shouldn't tolerate. I wouldn't if I'd seen it before! I was totally perplexed. And when I'd stop and not give him any line because he was off track he'd turn around, look at me and sit down. Now that I had seen before. I had to go back and get him on track again. Even though he did poorly at our lesson, it was a very good session. Now I know what to do for all these undesired behaviors. Our instructor is very good and very nice, but no nonsense. I'm such a beginner myself that I don't always know how to handle situations or what I'm seeing. This is like when I started out in agility. I'm having to learn more than Dudley is! I have to figure out how to read my dog and how to train my dog at the same time I'm actually trying to train my dog. Maybe that means that I'm the remedial student! Anyway we were told to go back to baby tracks. I've backed up to week one, day five and increased my tracking from 3 days a week to every day I can get out there (pretty much 7 days a week).

We went out this morning and did 3 baby tracks, 25 yards, 30 yards and 40 yards. Dudley did great on tracks 1 and 3 but lost focus on track 2. Tomorrow we'll go out and do day 6 which is 30, 35 and 40 yard tracks but aged longer.