Training continues...
Tracking training has been on hold for the past few weeks due to travel and work. Today, however, Layla and I were back on the trail. Today's track was 22 hours old. It was laid in the rain yesterday, and run in the rain today. Overall, the track had just over an inch of rain on it. The line was 702 yards long. All of these factors would have made for a good test of Layla's abilities. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that I have run out of fresh deer legs with which to train. I have been using hog feet as a substitute, but prefer deer since that is our primary tracking target. A dog trained on one should certainly be able to transition, as Layla has demonstrated in her most recent tracks where I substituted wild boar's feet. However, I really wanted to get a track with deer hoof scent in this time. I have a few feet set back for imprinting my new puppy (who will arrive in about 3 weeks), but these are old and heavily used, lacking much in the way of the interdigital scent that the dog follows.
Stubbornly, I decided to go ahead and use one of the old legs. I soaked it in water for a few hours in an attempt to re-hydrate the hoof, since it was dried out and inflexible. The water did little to help the mummified hoof, but I persisted. I also used about 1.5 oz of blood over the course of the track which was insufficient in retrospect. I kept telling myself that sometimes it is good to see how your dog performs when things are REALLY tough, and today I got my answer. As if all this wasn't enough, I left the house to lay the track with darkness approaching, accidentally leaving my flags at home. The track was obviously recorded with the GPS app on my phone, but when we ran the track, the app was running much slower than normal, creating a 60-90 second delay in the GPS. This effectively had me running the track blind. Here is the tracking line. The original line is in red, and the track is in yellow.
Layla got off to a great start. The ground was very wet, with a 10 mph SW wind and 80 degree temperatures...very good tracking conditions for July. She hit the first check flawlessly, but began working just downwind of the actual line. The track made a small "U" shape, moving from a recently brush hogged area to an area of tall grass, then back to the mowed section. Since she was a few yards down wind of the track, she picked it up as it rejoined the mowed lane then made a short back track down the area she had skipped over. This can be seen in the area just below point 1. I felt that she did quite good at figuring out her mistake, and making progress back down the trail. By this time, the rain had really begun to pour, and she showed a little hesitancy with continuing, preferring to sit next to me. I think that this was as much about the lack of a real scent trail as it was the rain. After a little verbal encouragement, she picked right back up where she had left off, and advanced the trail as it moved back into the higher cover.
She managed the next turn (between points 1 and 2) extremely well given the conditions. As we moved into some different cover, she really locked into the line, and began tracking very quickly down the trail. The wind was hard in our face at this point, and she over shot the trail by about 30 yards before I verbally corrected her, and started her in a controlled search pattern. This was the first time that I had needed to really correct her in the past several tracks. The wind was coming straight out of the woods, and I suspect that she was smelling game in the woods. She did show some uncertainty when she was off the trail, which was good to see. It is always good when a dog has a solid "tell" when it is no longer on the correct track, and Layla was fairly clear when she was off the mark.
After putting her through a search, she was able to pick up a little bit of scent, but remained uncertain, and continued to struggle with the line. Though I think that challenging a dog is good once it has developed a solid tracking ability, making a dog stretch too much, too soon can lead to a dog that searches more than it tracks...not something I want. We were walking that tight rope today, so I called her back a second time at the area of point 3. This time I downed her near the trail in order to calm her down, and refocus her attention. After a minute of sitting in the rain, we restarted the track. The scent in this area was obviously lacking, and Layla searched hard in an effort to maintain the scent line. This time she made the correction on her own (point 4), and advanced the line well for a distance. One more little round about near the end of the trail (point 5) as we once again transitioned from high to low cover, and she completed the track.
This was really a tougher track than I intended due to poor planning on my part. Still, we were able to work through some tough areas, and maintain good tracking effort which was eventually rewarded with a completed track and a game of tug of war with the deer hide. For her grand finale, Layla found a dead skunk on our walk back to the truck. She didn't hesitate to take a good roll on the carcass, and cover herself in skunk essence. I think she was trying to tell me something about my track laying efforts.