I'm not as frustrated this week as I was when I previously posted about tracking. Dudley over did it a bit when he was playing a couple of weeks ago and the vet restricted us from jumping for a while. For tracking that meant "short grass only". We needed to track in the short grass so Dudley wouldn't porpoise through the grass going in and out of the fields. I searched for places that had spaces with manicured grass. One of the places I found was a local church. I got permission to track on their grounds. They have a very large campus and have a lot of green space that is designated for future parking lots. But right now, it's just mowed grass. They graciously allow me to train Dudley there once a week. I now have 5 different locations I can track that are close to my house that have short grass. My first foray into the short grass was last week at the church.

Tracking in the short grass was such a blessing for us both! It's so much easier for me to know exactly where the track is when we're on the short grass. I can see the articles along the track so I know if he's on the article, is at the glove or is totally off base. I can give corrections with confidence in the short grass. Yippee! That helped us both. Dudley's tracking better and I'm confident that I'm correcting him when I should and rewarding him when I should.

This week has been really great because we've had a hard frost almost every morning. That is spectacular for tracking! You can easily see where you laid the track and know whether the dog is on course or not. I wish we had frost every morning!!! But you have to go out early so you can lay the track in the frost, age the track and still run it before the sun burns the frost off.

Dudley is doing better at tracking so we're taking baby steps toward corners. I've put in curves this week to get him started on corners. He was a little confused by them this morning but there was a stiff wind so I'm cutting him some slack. He did manage to find the track after a little concentrated searching so he did great.

You never know we might actually have a TD in our future!!!

And speaking of TD I'm very excited because one of our classmates entered a TD test and got in! It's this weekend and I get to watch. I'll be there anyway because I'm a cross track layer. She's got a great dog. He's a tracking machine. I can't wait!!!