12.31.06
Happy New Year
Everyone please have a happy and SAFE New Year!!! Try not to drink too much and definitely don’t drink and drive.
Club Training
The started out with grass tracking. The conditions were perfect. The grass was damp and the air was cool, but not cold. Since I don’t have access to large sections of grass anymore, I felt it was important to track the dogs at the park.
Jingo: For Jingo’s track, I did an endurance track with seven legs and three articles. Some legs had tons of food, while others had none. I let the track age for an hour. I got Jingo out and did a little focus work to help him prepare for the track. Butch came along for some guidance and advice. Once Jingo got to the flag, he took off with nice intensity sniffing deep into each track, but on the second leg he did a small cross check and then continued on. I had a suspicion I may have put his track on top of an old track from the day before. He seemed to alternate with corners. It seemed like every other corner he would go about a dog length past the corner and then turn back to the track. The other corners he made nicely. The other problem Butch pointed out was he tends to lunge forward after the articles. His advice to me was to pick up the article, go back and pick up the lead, and then reward to stop him from starting so quickly. My normal pattern is to pick up the article, reward, and then go back to the lead. We will see if this helps. For obedience, I took Jingo on the field and did some healing. It was annoying that Jingo was doing some of his bumping. I used me knee to push him out and it helped, but it didn’t take long before he started bumping again. We did the platz, sitz, and shtaey without issue. Since we haven’t done retrieves in sometime, I also did this with him. He retrieved like a champ. We ended the obedience with the long down. I put him in the down while others worked their dogs. Mike fired multiple rounds and Jingo didn’t flinch. This is my problem with him, he does great obedience, but come trial day he is a completely different beast. I don’t know how I am going to fix this!! For protection we did a tie out. Basically it all focused on control. Butch would agitate him and I would turn him on and off. I must say he did rather well. It took one reminder with the e-collar and after that he was fine. He would bark with great intensity, but with the command sitz; he calmly sat and watched Butch even though he continued to agitate him. With the command “ok” he would fire back up. Good job Jingo!!
Cosmo: My main issue with Cosmo is to work her around lots of distraction. She is a highly curious dog and easily distracted by her surroundings. She started out her day doing a four leg track with three articles. She did great, considering for the last leg I forgot to mark the turn and forgot the track turned. She still nailed the corner. When she turned, I was confused on what the heck she was doing; but when I looked ahead I saw her reward. I am glad she can track, because by time I get to her; I tend to forget which way I laid her track 
She must feel like she is working with the handicapped. After her track, I took her on the field for obedience. She made me SO PROUD!! She was heeling like my little brown superstar and did the sitz and platz out of motion with distractions around. The reason this is a big deal, is because she often won’t do the platz for dominance reasons when other dogs/people are around. She is great at home, but at the club I often have to correct her down. I didn’t have to do that once today and she dropped like a rock on command. I even heeled her through all the club members with a GSD barking up a storm at her. That is the ultimate challenge for her. On our first approach she didn’t want to turn her back on the barking dog, but after a couple pops and food rewards she had her head back in the game. The girl CAN learn! I also think with maturity she is learning to control her temper. Next week we are going to start the retrieve. The final phase was protection, and we had a little hiccup today. It was good experience for her though. We started out with Butch agitating her, running into the blind, me asking for focus, and then sending her into the blind. It started out great, Cosmo was doing a nice bark and hold with nice intensity. So we decided to do it a second time. At this point Ron came out to stand next to the blind and watch. It is exactly what she needed, because Cosmo does not discriminate between the decoy and other people. Everyone is fair game for a bite during protection. The second time I sent her, she took one look at Butch and ran past for Ron. Butch yelled and cracked her with his whip to get her focus on him and she got confused on who was the threat. She backed out of the blind because she didn’t want to turn her back on Ron or Butch. So we started over and Butch had me send her into the blind with Ron. After that she regained focus and continued to do her bark n’ hold with Ron. Ron and Butch took turns standing closely watching and switching who had the sleeve for the bite. She seemed to recover nicely and that is all I can ask.
12.30.06
Dirt Tracking
My beautiful grass fields are now dirt fields. It is time for the dogs to learn about dirt tracking!!
Jingo: Jingo is the more challenging of the two dogs to track. So for yesterday’s lesson, I decided to track him first and not fully age his track. I laid a five leg track with three articles. The legs alternated from crossing the furrow to going with the furrows. The dirt wasn’t soft, but more like damp clay. It was difficult for me to see my tracks and wondered how the heck the dogs were going to smell the track. The local farmer had put manure down on the fields a week ago and it smell like $hit!! I went and got Jingo and did some obedience to remind him that we are a team now. After a short round of obedience we headed off to the track. He approached the track and took off without issue. I was really surprised he didn’t have a problem. There were a couple of points were the furrow was deep and he would check himself before he continued down the track. Overall, I was satisfied with his track and pleased that he indicated all the articles without issue.
Cosmo: Ah, and now the tracking beast…. I had little doubt my evil brown girl would have issue with tracking, so I laid a three leg, three article track for her. I kind of wish it was longer, but at this point I am getting tired of walking through all the deep, soft, dirt. When I brought out Cosmo we did obedience. She was doing some really nice heeling. So I walked her near the fence line and continued to do obedience with her while Baccara barked at her through the fence. Anyone who knows Cosmo, understands this is a HUGE distraction for her as she doesn’t believe in backing down from a fight. Cosmo didn’t bat an eye and kept her focus on me. I even did a couple of platz out of motion and she kept her cool. Yeah for Cosmo! We ended the obedience with a five minute long down, with intermittent rewards. Once we were done, I gathered her up and took her to the field. She was super excited and sniffing all around as we approached the flag. At the flag she started circling, sniffing, circling, and sniffing. WTF?!?! Are you telling me Jingo can adapt without issue, but Cosmo can’t? As she continued to circle and sniff, it dawned on me I was standing on her track and blocking her path. I was thinking the track went west, when it really was going north. Once I stepped off the track, she circled and shot down the track. Oops, my bad. She had no issues like Jingo, but did need reminders at the articles. Urghh, I think I might need to get on her a little more about the articles. She is inconsistent with indicating them and I need to let her know it isn’t an option. It would be a shame to loose tons of points on the articles when she is such a wonderful tracker.
Country life is great but…
the INTERNET sucks!!! Updating my site is rather time consuming and painful 
12.13.06
First track at the new place
I tracked the dogs for the first time at the new place. I used the back field off of the old barn. The grass was dry and sparse and it was around 40 degrees with little wind. Since I hadn’t tracked the dogs in a week and conditions weren’t the best, I decided to make it a fun track with little pressure.
Jingo: His track was a five leg Schutzhund three track with three articles. Since last week was the first time we tracked together and he decided to blow me off, I wanted to go back to basics. I put a lot of food in the track and used articles that were twice the size of what would be used in a trial. The track was long to build his endurance and the conditions weren’t the best, so I didn’t know how we would do. I let the track age for an hour and brought him out. We did some obedience with positive reinforcement with food, no heavy corrections. He started out not paying attention, but after a couple of pops with the fur savor on the dead ring he started listening and doing some really nice focused healing. We healed up to the track and set him up to go. On command he began his track and did a WONDERFUL track, very slow, methodical, track with his nose deep in each footstep. I couldn’t find one of my corner flags and thought he missed the corner, but I decided to see where he was going before I corrected him. To my surprise he did a nice turn and when I looked back, I could see my flag was behind us. He indicated each article, and I gave him praise on each one. He finished the track with no issue and was very happy to see him track so well. I think my plan with him, will be to continue the same until we are officially on the same note and then start to increase the difficulty of the track back to where we were.
Cosmo: I LOVE this girl. She makes me wonder if it is the foundation or genetics when it comes to superior tracking ability. With Jingo I made every mistake in the book, but with Cosmo I took my time and did foundation work, foundation work, and when I thought we were ready to advance; I did more foundation work. Cosmo looks at tracking as if it is meal time. She will work the track to the very end with tons of intensity because she knows there is food out there somewhere to be found!! Since we had tracked in a week, I made a three leg track with two articles. The last leg was not a 90 degree turn, but line that serpentined. She took off down the track, indicated each article, and patiently waited for the command to resume her track. She hit every corner without issue was delighted to find her food hidden at the end. Prior to the track, we did some obedience focused only on heeling. She showed really nice focus, but I had a little bit of a problem with her trying to predict which way I was going. I could blame that on handler error because she watches my shoulder and if I move it to far back or forward she will pivot to that direction. With a verbal reminder, she would hop back to position without issue. Overall it was a nice training session.
12.04.06
Moving….
I will be off line until we are set up at our new place. Hopefully that won’t be long. Looking forward to living on 56 acres and not being able to see a neighbor for miles.
