10.28.22

Judi Edwards
Oct 28, 2022
1 min read

Fletch: Our field. TL 0845, TR 0915. Length ~200 yards, 2 turns, 90R & 90L. Paralleled woods, 1st turn away and uphill. Goal: add start article and length. S10W7F@4.

Results: sniffed through start article to find food drop, started briskly. Nice LOS and refind for right turn. More head up than I‘d like throughout track, consider removing flags. Adding tension made him sit rather than go nose down. Perfect L turn, never left track. Stopped for article, needed help downing.

Next: No turn flags, based on his behavior at the flags, he is associating them with food (stopping at flag, rooting around in the grass at the base of the flag). I’d like to work through that, but not with him doing more head up tracking. Will also progress to S10W10F@5, and 2 turns in the same direction.

2 Comments

Kelly Gannon

Oct 29, 2022

You said next up is two turns in the same direction. Doe the direction of turns matter? Do you try to solidify the skills in one direction, then the other? Or is a turn a turn?

Judi Edwards

Oct 29, 2022

Replying to

I think the direction matters, because dogs, like humans, are ‘handed.’ If you watch Saber, you’ll probably notice that she generally turns or circles significantly more in one direction. So I start out turning in the dog’s preferred direction. After they can turn well in both directions, I want to make sure they aren’t seeing a pattern (if we turned R, the next one is always L). Many dogs, at LOS, first check the direction of the prior turn, so direction does seem to be something they are aware of. Thus, I try to be very systematic to make sure I haven’t inadvertently trained something in. I have a ton of respect for MY unrecognized patterns. Does that make sense?