December 18th, 2025

Location: Endview Plantation

Track Layer: Heather

Article: toys and clothing items

Food: cheese

Goal for the day: Articles 

How did it feel? A bit frustrated. I feel like we will work on one thing and then other areas slip. We go back and then things I thought we had are out the window.

3 Things that went well:

1. Even when the articles weren’t exciting to him, he clearly wanted to go right back to tracking.

2. The vole incident could have completely derailed the track, but once we got him back to a heavy scent pad, he was able to re-engage and continue working. That’s a big win, especially with a dog who can get very environmentally focused.

3. I was able to stretch the food drops out to 15 paces and I don't think he noticed much at all! 

3 Things to improve on:

1. Right now his article responses are inconsistent—sometimes he’s all in, and other times it’s very half-hearted. I am hoping this is less about motivation and more about clarity.

2. It really feels like when we tighten up one skill, another one we’ve already worked on starts to wobble. 

3. I’m planning to go back to working on articles away from the track again. Even though we’re using the tether/string pulling technique, I still want him confidently picking the items up and engaging with them, not just acknowledging them. My hope is that by rebuilding that clarity off-track, it will transfer back onto the track more cleanly without causing other skills to slip.

Track 1

Heather had filled me in on her extra lesson with Judi, which focused on articles. I laid an article track for Wren and then decided to try one with Finwë as well, which Heather laid. I had a few toys he likes along with a few clothing items on a string. During the track, I felt a bit discouraged because it seemed like he was ignoring everything. However, after watching it back, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought. He’s just so mood-based. Sometimes he’s really into it and jumps for the articles, and other times he walks right past them. He did seem like he wanted to go right back to tracking, though, which I’m taking as a positive since his enthusiasm for tracking in general is something we have also been working on. No stoping and staring off and whining. At the end of this track, he had a really good play session with Heather on the way back to the car using the leather glove. We were hoping to get him more in the mood for engaging.

Track 2

This track was one of Judi’s suggestions, articles after the turn, trying to get him more jazzed about turns. Again, though, sometimes he’s raring to go and jumping on the articles, and other times he’s not. Like our last training session, he was fringing the track a bit. The wind was blowing in that direction, so I gave him a little grace there. He half-assed this article, and then Heather found a vole that both he and I had missed by literally one step. We thought it was dead… it was not. So then it became a bit of a struggle trying to get him back on the track instead of trying to maul the vole. Luckily, there was a heavy scent pad not far from where we needed to restart, and that really helped get him going again. I asked Heather to place the leather glove they had played with earlier on this track, hoping that since he had a fun association with it, he might be more willing to engage. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. He wasn’t very interested at all and again half-heartedly just put his mouth on it instead of picking it up.