10.14.23

Fletch: goal-turns. Location Hanover CH. Age 60". 60 degrees steady rain.

Nice start, immediately found cat 💩, tried to eat it. Restarted nicely. Began to work through the narrow area well, then marked fence. Found food drop, returned to work. Confused upon exiting narrows to open field. Lots of casting and not too focused checking. Clearly found new leg, then had to check out tree stump. Resumed tracking, made next turn ok, not like him though. Hit the row of trees, and back or parked trucks, and was overwhelmed by the opportunities or scents. Shortened way up, took him silently by the collar when I saw 'preparing to mark' behavior. He really did try to work, it was much, much harder than I anticipated (I failed to see the trees and trucks as a challenge). Struggled to focus to make the turn past the picnic table, and then hammered the turn at the fence. Turn at birdhouse pole challenged him, and the open angle diagonally across the field (& mow pattern) caused some serious back and forth casting. Nice article.

Will return next weekend and do short pieces of this, perhaps a smidge younger. He doesn't have a lot of experience tracking in public places, we need to address that.

He never stopped trying, stayed in the game happily. If I had allowed him to check things out for minutes on end I suspect he would have returned to the track each time. I didn't however want him to practice exploring other scents.