The Spaniel Annals

A brief stint as English department chair this fall quarter meant the training continued, but the blogging didn’t.  This fall Reardon and Gael have been getting back to tracking.  With a tracking test coming up locally in March 2012, it’s time to get that TD for Reardon.  He’s done a lot more tracking of other people recently (rather than just me), and handled aged tracks well up to one hour or so.

Over this holiday break, I had a morning to myself and took both dogs over to Carlson’s Canine Country Club, happily just a few miles away from my house.  In some early morning fog, I laid a 400-yard track for Reardon and a “baby” 100-yard track for Gael.  Here’s Reardon’s track:

Doesn’t look like much, does it?  But you’ll see by the map below (sorry for the blurryness) that it’s about 400 yards, with several turns. 

 While Reardon’s track is aging, I laid a short track for Gael with one turn and about 50 yards on each leg.  She gets lots of hotdog on her track, to get her to associate tracking a single scent with good stuff.  While Reardon’s track is aged over 1/2 hour, I’ll only age hers about 10 minutes.

Reardon gets his glove!  He did a great job with this track, working scent very confidently and happily.  He likes to play with his glove at the end of the track, so I let him.  This translates over into fully indicating the glove when he finds it at the end of the track, so liking the glove is always a good thing.   

After they run their tracks, it’s playtime!  Gael especially loves to run.   While the tracking releases some energy for her, it’s in her blood to run full-out, free and unencumbered.  Sometimes I think it’s not a good idea to let her run after she tracks, and I know many trainers who wouldn’t allow it, but in the end I always let her do what she so needs to do.

Meanwhile, Reardon has found a likely spot for birds.  In fact, it’s likely that the birddog trainers at Carlsons have planted birds in these grassy mounds.  That’s why they’re there.    Good for Reardon for figuring that out. 

At the end of our morning at Carlsons, all roads lead to Starbucks.  Funny how that happens! 

In Starbucks, I sip my latte and dream of next year, which hopefully will be an exciting one.  More than one Junior Hunter, Reardon’s TD, and both Reardon and Journey in the Open ring and heading towards Utility.  2012, here we come!