Week 62 - Practices

1/21/2026

The first little clip was from another day (1/18/26), but my camera did not catch the whole track. It was a delayed start, I didn't realize. I left it in because I wanted to keep it to look back at later. Wren did very well in that tiny 1 turn track into tall grass with a turn in the tall grass. It was raining that day. Both the tall grass, and the rain, are elements Wren has seen before, just not at the same time.

Now Onward to 1/21/26 below:

• Track 1

  • Located at short grass field. Lots of human and dog cross tracks.

    • Single laid. Straight Article Track

      • Short cut grass.

      • Aged: 25 Minutes

      • 210 yds total.

      • Articles: 5 Articles Total (start - end)

      • Pattern: Article --> 25 strides, food --> 25 strides, Article --> 25 strides, food --> repeat.

• Track 2

  • Located at open field very recent human and dog cross tracks.

    • Double laid. 1 Open Left Turn.

      • Short cut grass.

      • Aged: 45 Minutes

      • 175 yds total.

      • Articles: Start Article & End Article

      • Food Drop Pattern: Shuffle 5 steps -->Walk 25 Paces--> Food Drop -->Walk 25 Paces-->Scuff 5-->Walk 25 Paces--> Food Drop -->Walk 25 --> Scuff 5--> Repeat. 

      • Turn: Scuff 5 out of turn--> walk 5--> Food.

GOAL FOR THE TRACK:

• To practice my line handling on a blind turn. I have decided that my training criteria is that I want to keep myself within at least 1 stride from the true track. Anything more, and I asked Flora to halt us so that I can pause Wren to let her recenter on the track.
  

How did it feel?

• The article tracks felt good.

  • I goofed up my instructions for Flora when she laid the article track.. I 100% told her 25 steps between food/article drops. I meant to make the criteria shorter for the article track. So, it was accidentally a long article track. Flora did exactly what I asked her to lay.

• The Blind Turn track felt pretty good too over all. A bit skittery after the 30 yard flag.

  • While on this track, I realized I did not give Wren her afternoon smaller meal like normal. She tends to be more frantic for the food drops when a hungry girl. Maybe the case today, or maybe not.

  • Also, bad Heather, I watered her at the van and then left my water bottle on the bumper! When I went to re-scent her I patted myself down and said 'oh dang it'. So that is completely my fault her re-scent was less successful with the dry cold wind.

  • I didn't feel stressed on this track in general, but it was interesting working with her in that moment. She was very clear on when she was 'working' vs dashing, if that makes sense? Who knows what caught her attention, but there were times she wanted to walk a direction head up, vs track the correct direction with head down.

  • Over all, I do like going back to rewatch that track. I am trying to decide if I should have called her back and gently held her harness to help her forward one step, when I realized I did not have water to maybe make her more successful?

List three things the dog did well:

1. Finding Articles instead of blowing past them.

2. Being 'Honest' in her behaviors of "working the track" vs "Oh there is another interesting thing"

3. Her persistence. I had planned for this to be an easy track day, but it proved to be a little more frustrating for her than I intended. I will make sure her next day is a really easy win with high rate of reward.

   
   

List things you’d like to improve:

1. My line handling went sloppy again this time, not the worse but I felt very uncoordinated and slightly dizzy. Might have been getting sick? Either way, was not my best supporting my partner that day. We both still had an over all good time after days of being cooped up at home.
   

   https://youtu.be/VVQolYwe49E