January 28th, 2025

Went up to Riverview Farm Park. Since it was a weekday in the morning there wasn’t too much going on. There was a few people walking on the trail and some construction going on but nothing too distracting.

Date: Jan 28, 2025

Goal for the track: endurance and article acknowledgment.

How did it feel: I was struggling laying these tracks. I miscalculated when measuring my stride. The next day I measured them with a measuring wheel. A comfortable wider stride for me is not as short as I thought. So the tracks laid this day were A LOT longer than they were meant to be. The whole training session was a bit of a mess. The first track was rough. He kept looking up and it was a bit discouraging. I am trying so hard to make this fun and enjoyable for him. The second track felt much better though. It was almost like he woke up "oh yea this is what we are doing". I could definitely see that he needed to get into the rhythm. We only got two tracks done instead of three due to time. Finwe also had agility class later in the day so I didn't want to burn him out. This ended up being the right choice since he ended up on much longer tracks than we had been practicing. 

3 Things that went well:

1. he picked up the articles
2. he found the track when I lost it
3. pulling me to the start flag

3 Things I’d like to improve

1. double line ups on my turn
2. preventing him from being off to the side of the track
3. Being more conscious of not stopping while dropping the food drops

Track 1

190 yards (again much longer due to my error) with food drops every 8 paces. This was painfully slow and rough. He started okay but then he kept looking up at everything going on. I did not toss any food down to get him going. I tried to wait him out and/or give him the verbal cue to track. He was a few inches off to the side of the track most of the time. I am thinking this was due to the wind. It was pretty windy and as Jen mention, his hair is a nice built in wind sail. The article placed at the end was a tug. He picked it up on his own. He didn't do it right away but still a win!

Track 2

200 yards with a left open angle turn. I struggled so much laying this track. I used the washer to mark the turn but had issues with my line up. I ended up using one that was too similar to another one close by. I was miscounting steps with my paces. It was a big mess. When running the track he did better than the first one, however at the turn I myself got lost. I got mixed up with the line up. In hindsight I could have ended the tracking there. Maybe I should have, but he was pulling at a certain direction and I let him work it out. He found it and then made his way to the end. Used a stuffed pheasant toy as the article. Again he didn't pick it up right away however eventually he did pick it up.