Tracking

Got some new photos of the boys recently. Doc is doing great with tracking--we go out 2 or 3 times per week, and he continues to impress me with his drive for this particular task. I took him out this past Saturday and tracked him in some stubbly tall grass that was full of thorns and sticks, and he was fantastic--kept his nose in the rough stuff, downed on his articles, didn't give up even when he sort of lost the track. I say sort of because it seems it was handler error that caused us to get lost. There was an article at the end of the track, which Doc didn't find. And me, being the fumbling dummy that I am, didn't even realize that we'd reached the track's end. So Doc overshot the article, lost scent of the track and circled and circled trying to find it again--he tried so HARD. I put him in a down while I stamped out a few footsteps and put down a new article, just to show him that we were done . . . and I even managed to muck that up. I didn't know where my article was again because it was lost in the tall grass. Butch reminded me for probably the third time now that I NEED to know exactly where my tracks are. I can't expect the dog to succeed if I can't help him out. He's right--I really need to get serious here!

Anyway, here are some recent photos of Doc tracking a couple of weeks ago at Baltimore County Community College. There's a nice field there that's on a hill, but it's really not used for anything much, so the grass is nice and lush and we always have it to ourselves.