December 9th, 2025

Location: Newport News Park

Track Layer: Myself and Heather

Article: Coyote tail and clothing items

Food: Spam

Goal for the day: Work on turns with a different pattern and also implement scent pads

How did it feel? Class was canceled due to weather, I still had the day off work so I decided to take advantage of that and get out track. This park can be hit or miss with how busy it is. I was hoping with the cold weather and snow on the ground it would not be as busy. We had a few people walking with dogs was it wasn't too bad. Food has been an issue for him, even off tracks. He is extremely picky. It not uncommon for him to go a full day without eating anything. Cheese was our normal go to but I was not really happy with the amount of time he was spending just staring off when he should have his nose down and working. Thats why I decided to try something else. With the spam he doesn't want to miss anything! Now the challenge is figuring out how to spread the drops out so he isn’t stopping and turning back so often. It’s going to be a balance, but at least he’s motivated.

3 Things That Went Well:

1. He handled the transition between tracks quicker than expected. Even with the three-step offset, he didn’t get stuck or overly confused.
2. Using spam clearly made a difference he was more engaged with the track but he is also stopping more instead of skipping over food. 
3. When "invoking the magic” he responded almost immediately and corrected himself.

3 Things to Improve On:

1. He’s stopping more frequently now, so practicing longer stretches between drops will help keep the flow and momentum.
2. Work on line handling more when he starts is fringe on the track. Not sure why he has started doing this.
3. He tends to get lost right after turns. A bit more support or scent pad use there could help smooth that out.

 Track 1

We tried the loss-of-scent exercise again since I had been laying it incorrectly. Because he’s very visual, I was curious to see how he would track in the snow. The ground was actually very wet with lots of large, deep puddles. I figured this would be good practice since we can’t always control what conditions at a test will be like. During our last practice, I felt like he was fringing to the side of the track a bit. I got confirmation of that this time since my footprints were visible in the snow and he was definitely walking along the edge instead of right on the line. I tried to “invoke the magic” and get behind him. It worked for a moment, but then he stopped for a food drop. Once he started again, Heather told me to do the same thing, and it seemed to help. After that, he stayed on the track much better.

On the second leg it was slow going lots of stopping to go back for food, and lots of me stopping him because he was starting to drift off the track. During the transition from Track 1 to the next track (the one that was three steps to the side), he didn’t take as long as I expected. But he did miss the giant scent pad with all the food and went straight to the second one a few feet ahead! I wasn’t sure what to do in that moment. Heather said press on so we did!

Track 2

This track was laid by Heather. I asked her to lay the scent pads and space the food drops farther apart (aside from the start), since on the first track he was stopping a lot for food. The track crossed a gravel path. Right at the edge, he started really detailing something. I initially thought he might be working out the odor difference from grass/snow to gravel, but honestly, I think it was just another dog’s pee! This track felt better, he walked through water, mud, snow and made the turn much better than the first track.