"Don't they cheat and learn to track by sight?"
We finally had snow this weekend, so Dustin and Bruce each had two snow tracks before everything melted. That certainly isn't enough to teach them to track by sight, but I certainly learned a lot by watching them. Dustin worked well, and I saw him have an "Aha" moment at the turns when he could see what was happening. The second day, his turns were obscured by holes in the snow where clots had fallen from the tree branches -- footprints everywhere! He kept his nose low and checked each likely hollow, and even got the metal article he'd missed the day before.
With Bruce, the snow helped me put on the brakes as we reached an article. I need to cut up my elderly hot-pink sweatshirt for working him; I can see those easily and the dog can't. This is good for a hot tracker who's lukewarm on finding anything. He's maturing, but is still a bit of a scatterbrain. I'm wondering if he'd take to field-trial training and whether I could ILP him as a mysteriousy small Labrador.
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Four words. "He was the Runt."
ReplyDeleteThey actually had Grim dna'd at one time and she really was a Great Dane, but a very small one. (Not a very small dog, just a very small Great Dane.) So I've seen it myself, and my experience with dogs is quite small, as we know.
He was the runt. That's your story, and I'm stitcking to it....