Tracking

Me and Bella did some tracking this evening, I did a mini-tracking test simulation with 3 articles, two turns and half the distance a tracking I test is. I tried inserting the track below.

Sjá Capital Region á stærra korti

I'm really happy with how it went. This is the longest track I've done with Bella so far. It was aged about 10 minutes when I started and it took us 15 minutes to complete. The first leg was very good, then when reaching the turn she missed it but worked herself back to it after some swaying back and forth.
When she was securely on the second leg it was all rainbows and unicorns as before, until we reached the turn. She didn't quite catch the turn, but was a lot more confident in searching for it and it and was back on the final leg.

The final leg was without a doubt the most challenging. She worked half of it without a fuss but then she had clearly gotten less focused on the job and was swinging to the sides sniffing and biting grass. She even tried to roll but then I finally interfered and told her to track. Which she did. And finished. Yay!

If I nail the marking, we'll nail the test. I have the entire summer to build up distance. I think I might even just train for the Track II test in October because the Track I test is so simple. (Please no one bring this post back up if I fail the test down the line! haha)

Last Few Days

Last weekend me and the whole family went to a cabin we've been to many times before. We were hoping to get some sun and mild weather but spring in Iceland has been aborted so we got rain, lots of wind and cold weather.

In general it was a good excuse to be lazy. I did lay one track for her and it was excellent, except I jumped the gun a bit and forgot to give her plenty enough time to pee before putting the harness on. Once the harness was on she was just running around trying to find the start of the scent and when she found it she got her moment of zen and decided to pee on it. Pure handler mistake there!

I really need to start working on teaching her to mark objects when tracking. I am just torn between whether to teach her to  pick it up -which I just recently knew was allowed- or sit/lay down. I had started teaching her to sit down when doing the peppermint detection training but haven't gone very far with it as I had to throw my idea of using balls into the ocean. She's not toy driven. at. all. It had turned into her seeing the ball go down, then instead of trying to get the ball and sniff where the scent was she just stood back and stared at me, except she sometimes sat down because she knew that had something to do with it. Stalemate!



On Monday I crashed something awful, I barely got out of bed without getting ridiculously dizzy and whatnot. It took me two more days to snap out of it and yesterday I was next to normal, just in time to watch an Obedience competition. It offered Bronze grading and Obedience I. I am aiming to do a tracking test next fall and have been considering if I should give the Bronze obedience test a try. I spoke to a trainer there (and a Border Terrier owner!) and she was encouraging me to give it a go.
What cripples me the most is the fear of Bella running away from me during testing. Memories of me chasing her around the agility arena still haunt me. Since I'm on maternity leave this summer that it's an excellent opportunity for me to train her in areas with distractions and see where it gets us. I know she can do this, we just need to work hard.

A Day Off

Two weekends ago me and fiancé went to a hotel out of town. I was so busy taking care of what to do with the two year old and packing for the little one who would stay with us that the night before leaving I realized I had completely forgotten to make arrangements for Bella.

There's no such thing as dog friendly hotels in Iceland and just recently some camping sites have started allowing dogs to stay. I was really disappointed in myself.

But to make the best out of things I decided to check the weather forecast and the following night promised cloud and rain. If it would come true it would mean Bella could sleep in the car overnight. Despite it being spring the temperature is fairly low.

The drive was a lot of fun, we drove through a fjord that's called Hvalfjörður which translates as Whale-fjord. It's a short driving distance from the city and used to be the only way to get to western Iceland but a tunnel rendered the road useless and now it's barely used.

When we reached the hotel I was freaking out because the sun was shining and there was no way I would let Bella stay in the car that way. I was trying to figure out if and how I could smuggle her inside or what else I could do. Thankfully, while I was agonizing over what to do, the sky thickened up and it started raining in the evening. Bella was in excellent shape the morning after.

On the way back home (and actually also on the way to the hotel, but I discarded the photos) we stopped to let Bella loose.

There was some running. And then:

 

Emergency brakes!

 

There's sniffing to do.

 

Sniffing at the beach.



More sniffing to do.

 

Back to the beach to.. yep, sniff!

I am fond of this last one, it just lacks the tracking line and we would look like professionals.

Starting Again

I have been a bit lazy with the camera in the past few days. The days fly by so quickly that I never get to do everything that I want to do.



I did attempt to sign me and Bella on a 10 week course in Obedience this summer but it was full. Maybe a spot will open up, maybe not. It doesn't look like there will be a tracking course for us either.

More excitingly, my physiotherapist assured me I would be biking this summer and encouraged me to give it a go whenever I felt I was up to it. So I went on a 2 minute ride on Monday with no bad results. So today I went ahead and took Bella with me on a short 5 minute jog.



She looks very calm and stoic in these two pictures but in fact she was running back and forth whining because she was so excited to go.



As expected she still pulls like a freight train. I need to put effort into breaking that habit if I am to allow her to bike with me this summer. What's more exciting is that now I finally have a car that can haul bikes which means I can also find biking spots where she can be off leash. I've dreamt about that for several years now.

What a fantastic summer this will be!

I to the L

Tomorrow is election day in Iceland. Me and Bella used the opportunity to train tracking.

I went ahead and started training turns today by doing three short L shaped tracks, all with a turn to the right. I took a photo of the last one we did. The cone closest is the start and the one above it is the end.

The first two Bella aced, this one was interesting as Bella took the turn, went 2 meters and then suddenly made a 180° turn back until she lost the track, turned back and found it again and finished.

This is before she started that final track, eagerly waiting for my arrival.

Looking at how yellow and dull the grass in these pictures is makes me yearn for real spring and summer.

First Day of Summer

Somebody decided to make an annual holiday in April in Iceland to celebrate that summer has arrived. When me and Bella went out tracking today it snowed.

The track I laid was the longest one yet and went both up and down a fairly steep slope. The tracking from Bella was really good. She started out with her high speed but did slow down about halfway through and worked at a steady pace all the way to the end. I was super proud, especially since she's in heat and has been feeling a little under the weather.

'I'm what??'

In between Bella sleeping and sleeping more, we are also practicing with a method of marking. It involved buying tennis balls and making a 'scent box' from an unused flower pot and cardboard.

I bought these Kong AirDog balls which were bouncy and squeaky. I have always had better luck using treats to motivate Bella but wanted to try a toy this time. She has already 'killed' one of the balls and she wasn't even trying! It still bounces so we can use it but I had hoped that they would survived more than a dog's bite.

Anyhow!

The trick is to put the highly desired ball into a place where it's impossible to reach without help. Inside the box is the smell I want Bella to associate with the ball in time. So what I'm trying to teach her in the long run is that when she finds the smell she will sit down because sitting down when she finds the smell means fun/ball.

'I need monkey fingers.'

I like the theory and believe it can work but I am still on the fence whether I can use a ball to get where I want. I'd rather try not to involve treats if I can help it. I wanted to see Bella be more eager to stick her nose into the box to get the ball but after the second time of trying she knew she couldn't get the ball and just stood there waiting for something to happen. I'm trying to wait for her to get close to the box and stick her nose in before I tell her to sit and wait and then play.

That Time of Year

The obsessive sniffing. The non-stop scent marking. The Nobody-Is-At-Home feeling I get when trying to get her full attention outside on the leash. Yep, it's all indicators that Bella is going into heat and today she started full force. I highly recommend neutering female dogs, I would do it in a heartbeat if I wasn't being cheap and saving myself $500 to do something else (like buy camera equipment).

We did, however, go out and lay a track. I made it a little shorter than yesterday (75m) and really wanted her not to get lost so when I crossed a low bush similar to the one two days ago I was more generous with treats and went as straight through it as possible. Other than that I am slowly starting to reduce the amount. What surprises me is how fast she works the tracks and at first I thought she was definitely just sniffing out the treats and not my scent but now that I see how many treats she tends to leave behind and still not lose track I am starting to have more faith.

I am an air traffic controller and in my work I first and foremost trust myself to do my job inside the area I work at each given time. I don't think about whether my colleagues are doing theirs once the airplanes cross the boundaries of control sectors, I must trust them like they must trust me.
With Bella, I am finding it a challenge to stop worrying about whether she is doing her job and just let go. Maybe I am really a control freak at heart and that it's a good lesson for me. We are both learning and I am no doubt learning a lot more than Bella is. It's interesting to see her go slightly of track (in my eyes) and then jump right onto it as if she was never off it... which is no doubt what was actually going on.

Today I saw a video with a very brief explanation of how marking was taught for a drug/explosive detection dog using a wooden box. I may give that a try here at home using a very advanced tool -children's shoe box. The clip added the missing link.