Sunday's Tracking

1. Lisa and Bob, and Janet and Pepper, both passed their Orange Star test! Congratulations! Lisa and Bob passed with flying colors, even though Bob had to climb out of a couple of furrows that were as deep as he is tall. Which is the same as Britta or Hunther climbing a 3 foot hill to follow the scent. Lisa was also getting over a case of food poisoning. Great job!

Janet and Pepper had problems with her track, as did a few other dogs today (more on this later). She had gusting winds, the smell of the horse stables, and dry cold soil to track on. The first attempt didn't go well, so Janet put Pepper back in the crate (in Janet's cool new car!). After a couple more teams tracked, Janet laid another track that Pepper followed calmly and competently to its end. After the second track, I asked Janet for the pace count. When she told me 50/50/50 (with a left and a right turn) I realized that she had just done the Orange Star track! Outstanding!

2. Patti O'Neill and her Tervuren, "Anika" joined us this morning. Patti is going for her Schutzhund 1 title with Anika next week, and hopefully will be joining us again in the future. Welcome aboard!

3. Dawn and Penny, Janet and Pepper, and me and Hunther all had problems with tracks laid near the 8:00 am class start. (Interestingly, Elissa and her two dogs, Bodhi and Leroy, didn't seem to be bothered by the conditions.) All three of us laid second tracks, and all three of our dogs handled the second track much better than the first. I couldn't figure out what was going on, as all three dogs are usually good trackers. But I noticed that Penny's second track was run with a deep nose almost the entire way, whereas her first track had a lot of trailing and air-scenting. For some reason, I checked the thermometer in my truck. I saw that the air temperature had risen form the low 40's to 59 degrees during Penny's second track. The wind had also slowed to almost nothing. Afterward, I laid another track for Hunther, aged it for 45 minutes, and he ran the first two legs almost perfectly. (He had some attention issues caused by some medication I had given him, another variable to be controlled for.) I would have scored him in the 82-85 point range for the second track; he would have gotten a failure for the first one.

Here's what I think was going on: The soil and the air was cold and dry; even for those who hydrated their tracks, the low soil temperature inhibited the growth of the bacteria in the scent to the point that the tracks couldn't age properly. That, combined with the wind further drying the soil and removing more heat, along with the competing distraction of the stable smells to confuse and distract a dog that had already lost the track scent, made the tracks much more difficult for our dogs to figure out. I tried to locate a website that would explain how much faster soil loses heat than air, but got an information overload (none of which answered my question). Also, on reflection it seems that the farther away from the hills and stables a dog was, the better the dog did on the track.

It sure wasn't pleasant watching Hunther perform so badly at first (with a week to go before his Schutzhund 2 trial!), but I learned a lot about environmental factors affecting Hunther's and the other dogs' performance this morning. I also learned to control my panic!

Dave Port