February 11th, 2026
Location: Jamestown Event Park
Track Layer: Heather
Article: sock
Food: spam
Goal for the day: Confidence and endurance
How did it feel? Felt better than the last training session which had me feeling pretty defeated.
This was our third track using the food pattern of scuff 5, walk 17, food. He seems comfortable with this spacing, and MAM suggested we could stretch it another five paces next time. My goal for this session was a longer straight endurance track to help rebuild confidence after our last practice felt a bit messy. Because of the terrain, we weren’t able to get quite as much distance as I had planned. I was hoping for around 250 yards, but we ended up with 198.
Overall, I feel like he did okay. There was still quite a bit of turning back for missed food, and he was snaking along the first portion of the track. Halfway through he seemed to straighten up. Midway through, I had a realization: every time he turned back to search for food, I was stepping forward. Every. Single. Time. I wasn’t intentionally pressuring him, but I absolutely was. Once I noticed it, I made a conscious effort to plant my feet and let him fully work it out without me creeping ahead.
We also did an article practice game off the track. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m going to start working this more outside the house and completely separate from tracking. I don’t think he’s fully connecting the article to reinforcement yet, and I don’t want to rely solely on a toy to build excitement around it.
3 Things that went well
1. This was your third track at scuff 5, walk 17, food and he’s handling it.
2. He completed a longer straight track without major derailment. That was confidence-building after a rough session.
3.
3 Things to Improve On:
1. Missed Food & Backtracking
2. I need to keep my feet still!
3. Working articles more often in different settings.
He did well. Agree that you need to stand still. Agree that playing article games away from tracking are helpful.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to keeping your feet still during searching or food consumption etc, try counting backwards from 3 before stepping in the direction the dog commits . 3, 2, 1, step
So, is the food AT 17, or at 8ish? If it’s at 17, what happens after the food? Walk 17 more, or scuff? Just trying to understand your pattern.
ReplyDeleteI am THRILLED you picked up on your moving feet all be yourself! So much easier to fix when YOU recognize the problem.
Next, I’d like you and Heather to look at the training track rotation, and each of you, on your own blogs, tell me what that rotation would look like for your dog at this point in his training.
This looked really good, he handled the noise quite well. I adore the distance.
After I see your response we can talk about what comes next.
The pattern is scuff 5, walk 17, food. Scuff 5, walk 17, food. Thank for the feedback!
DeleteOK, we are going to change that tomorrow.
Delete