Tracking with Friends

The other day my FRIENDS came to visit. Can you believe how lucky we were to find new friends on the tracking course? Mom made tracks for Dino and Hamlet and Caroline made tracks for me!

Dino’s favorite part is finding the noms!

Little Hamlet got to follow a track in our yard and on the field so he didn’t get stuck in too much underbrush.

Making sure his human can keep up!

He did really well, but struggled a little with the (rounded) 90 degree turn. It’s actually easier to follow a track in thick underbrush, which makes more scent when bruised and disturbed, so he really did well!

Silly Auntie Caroline managed to wander off into the marsh! It was really wet – the stuff that looks like ice and snow is actually water. Hard to get sharp images when I’m virtually flying across the ground, you know.

The silly humans kept insisting I had to walk away from the track because THEY thought they knew BETTER. Hah.. as if! I managed to get them back on track (literally) again, though, even if they never found one of the markers. If they’d just listened to the expert (ME) they’d have found it for sure!

Quite blurry, but you can see my red self jump across a log in the middle of the marsh. I was up to my belly in water at one point (Auntie Caroline went into water so deep her wellies weren’t tall enough (scroll back up to see them in the photos with Dino and Hamlet!) to keep the water out and had to turn back but even with this little trick I found the way! I’m Gummi the SuperTracker, you see!

Mmm! A nice big piece of pork chop at the end! Now that the tracks are longer and more difficult I even take the time to stop for snacks along the way if someone seems to have dropped a piece of raw meat or half a hot dog, and a nice treat at the end like this isn’t wrong either!

Thanks for coming over to play guys!

Kisses,
Gummi

Tracking Course Day I and II

Hi everyone! It’s been crazy busy and uploading the pix took forever and.. well.. now I’m all out of excuses, I think. ;O)

I do, however, have more pix from the tracking course. The sunny ones are from day one and the gray ones from day two. It really was a wonderful weekend, even with rain, snow and sleet on day two.

First – Camilla and Mia does the demo on day I.

Adorable Mia! (Aussie)

Gummi on his first track – it was WAY to easy for him, and he ran past 95% of the treats. Seriously. 😉 Thanks Anita for taking the pix of us on the first day!

Ruth the Giant Schnauzer.

Kira the tolling retriever.

It was a really beautiful day on Saturday!

Hamlet the Havanaise. He worked very well, but had some challenges with short legs and long furs. He got stuck from time to time.

No worries, though, his human helped him out!

Norwegian Lundehund – Holli

Sunday wasn’t quite as lovely – rain, sleet and snow.. but high spirits!

Almost all of us – including Freia the kelpie.

Gummi’s last track of the weekend that Caroline had laid (the first one that I hadn’t laid for him), not his longest, maybe 200 meters and with two 90 degree angles + over a little stream. Thanks Caroline for taking pictures along the way!

He couldn’t quite believe she’d really crossed it – but since it seemed like she had he went over.

And he found the end, too!

I’m surprised how much he liked it and how fun that made it for me, too! What’s even better was that two of the others live in our area and we can get together for more tracking! I did this course partially because if he liked it it’s something we can do on our own, but having others to do it with is even better!

Ane

Gummi the high speed tracker

Good morning everyone!

We had a lovely day in the woods yesterday, nice and sunny. Way to go DWB weather vibes! We’re just about to leave for the second day of the course, but wanted to post a few pix from yesterday. Well, sort of.. They’re stills taken of a video clip with my cell phone, so they’re not the greatest quality. But at least they’re of Gummi – hard to take proper pictures when out with my own dog. Hard to take video, too, but at least a got a little of the last track.

I have tried a few tracks with Gummi before, and as you might remember he’s done a little blood tracking. I’ve tried to just do a little easy “regular” track with a few treats in, puppy style, but he didn’t seem all that keen. He also didn’t seem able to slow down an eat treats that close together, so I wasn’t sure if he didn’t find the track or the treats or if he found the track and didn’t have time to bother with the treats.

It was the latter.. After a quick demo we all laid short tracks with treats for every step more or less, then we all watched each dog work to see the different styles and learn how to work with different dogs. Gummi just zoomed to the end of his and kept going.. Hardly bothering to eat more than maybe 3 of the treats along the way.. no idea how long it was – it was supposed to be maybe close to 100 meters, but was probably a little shorter. He didn’t even want to eat the pork chop at the end, but just keep going. At least he’s tracking – even though it can be tricky to slow them down once they’re that fast..

The next one was made a lot harder, curving lines and angles, and maybe twice the length, over several logs and so on. He lost the scent several times that time, wich was great. He needs to learn he’s got to pay attention and be thorough. He slowed down a lot and ate the treat at the end, but not more than maybe one along the way. I left clusters of treats this time, maybe 4 times along the track, but it still wasn’t enough to encourage him to stop completely.

The third track was more or less the same – I’d forgotten to bring more treats when I laid it so only had two piles of treats along the way. This time I tried with a toy at the end, but he just looked at it funny like “Hey.. that looks and smells like MY toy.. wonder what it’s doing out here” and kept walking.. LOL.. Once I turned him around I did manage to encourage him to play, though, but doesn’t seem like a toy will work a whole lot better with making him stop.

I got an idea for the final track, though, the one all the pix are from!

Instead of using clusters of small treats I left out half a hot dog or half a fish cake along the way since he does tend to favor large treats over small ones. You know how trainers tend to say that dogs will prefer lots of small treats over one big one? Well, Gummi says they’re either liars or just stupid.

Big treats worked a lot better! He stopped and even went back for a couple of them.. Generally you don’t want them to go back, but since if he’s to do it for competitions he needs to find objects in the track it’s not such a bad idea for him to be allowed to search a little for it when he smells something in the track. Not sure how long he’s going to be allowed to do so, though, will have to ask the instructor. Either way we gave lots of treats to the birds and foxes today! LOL.. I’m sure we’ll do the same today.

See? Here there’s even a little snow on the  ground 🙂

Ane

What’s cooking?

Mom and I will be making muffins this weekend, I think..

Don’t you think I could help out with that now? Actually Mom says we’re going tracking this weekend! My first ever formal tracking course.. we’ll be outside all day Saturday and Sunday, so puh-lease keep your paws crossed for less rain than what they’re threatening us with at the moment…

If I’m almost drowned I’m certainly going to deserve those muffins!

Kisses,
Gummi

Kitty scent work

The kitties were hungry and annoying the other day, so I gave them something to do. LOL..

At one point they wanted the same treat and stood forehead against forehead pushing back and forth.. Unfortunately I had turned the video off by then, it wasn’t very action packed.

At least they figured out what to do eventually. Silly kitties.

Thankful Turkey Day

Now we don’t really celebrate thanksgiving here, at least not in the way it’s generally thought of which is the classic “turkey day” stuff. We do have a thanksgiving/harvest day in fall, but it’s not celebrated in the same way. Either way – we’ve been eating turkey around here lately. We can generally get cheap turkey and other Christmas foods this time of year, and now that we have plenty of freezer storage I got a couple mostly intended for the boys. Let’s just say they haven’t been complaining!

Since the tracking session on Monday went so well I made it a little more difficult for him on Tuesday. However, YouTube is being stupid and we’re not able to share the video yet. Hopefully it will turn up here:

Here’s a collage of our dinner today, though! We’ll probably have leftovers tomorrow. And the day after. And..

Right now we are very thankful for Turkey! We’ve got lots of other things to be thankful for, too, but Mom’s being grumpy today and it’s sort of rubbing off on us. Her car decided to go mess up its speedometer yesterday, and now she’s a nice new expense to look forward to. Oh yeah.. and the power supply chord to the laptop died on Tuesday and the screen on the little computer on Wednesday. So happy all around! 😉

Kisses,
the Wriggles