TDX Test Yesterday
Yesterday was our club's (TCOCF) TDX test, so I went to lay crosstracks. The weather was nice and comfortable, in the mid '70's. There were 4 entries and 1 alternate. The first 4 never made it past the first turn before they were whistled off. The alternate was working very well and made it to the last leg with all the articles found and one set of crosstracks crossed, but she took the crosstracks on the last leg and got the whistle. It was a little disappointing to not have anyone pass, but that is how the TDX's have been going around here.
I made an appointment with a member of the club, Fred, he is a judge and handles all the tracklayers at the tests, for the Chauncey's and Blueberry's certification in 2 weeks. So, I am just going to do some light, fun tracks in the next couple weeks.
After the test, Joyce, Jean, Robin, and I went to the front of the property to lay some tracks. We all brought one dog each. Joyce and Robin went to one section for their tracks and Jean and I laid each other a track.
Jean laid mine first and I didn't watch which way she went in the woods and told her not to mark any corners, so I would have to read my dog. When she came back, I laid a 250 yds one for her and she ran it right away as her dog has only been tracking a week and she is not aging the tracks yet. She has a approx 2 year old Lab that was dumped in a neighborhood at about 8 mos old, so she kept him and already has his CD and JH. he is an awesome tracker. The field I laid his track in was thick with old mowed grss and had a lot of logs and old, rotten deadfalls to climb over. I didn't see most of it until I was tripping over it. Jean ran him and he did wonderful. Jean spent most of the track making sure she didn't fall, as I warned her of all the things to watch out for. He ran the whole track without any help from Jean and finished very well.
We waited a little longer and I ran Blueberry when her track was around 35 to 40 minutes old. She started strong and really worked the track. I remembered to let the line out to 20 ft before following and kept it long. She worked her turns fine and at the last turn the track went through a line of trees, and she worked that turn a couple extra times before taking the last leg. She stayed strong the whole track and stepped on the glove at the end. The track was about 300 yds long and had 3 turns in it.
Jean asked me how I felt afterwards about Blueberry's track and I felt very proud of her. Blueberry is being so consistent and I have spent much of this last year studying my dogs so that I can read their signals. I feel very confident that Blueberry and I are ready and am just going to take it easy with her over the next few weeks so I don't stress her out.
I made an appointment with a member of the club, Fred, he is a judge and handles all the tracklayers at the tests, for the Chauncey's and Blueberry's certification in 2 weeks. So, I am just going to do some light, fun tracks in the next couple weeks.
After the test, Joyce, Jean, Robin, and I went to the front of the property to lay some tracks. We all brought one dog each. Joyce and Robin went to one section for their tracks and Jean and I laid each other a track.
Jean laid mine first and I didn't watch which way she went in the woods and told her not to mark any corners, so I would have to read my dog. When she came back, I laid a 250 yds one for her and she ran it right away as her dog has only been tracking a week and she is not aging the tracks yet. She has a approx 2 year old Lab that was dumped in a neighborhood at about 8 mos old, so she kept him and already has his CD and JH. he is an awesome tracker. The field I laid his track in was thick with old mowed grss and had a lot of logs and old, rotten deadfalls to climb over. I didn't see most of it until I was tripping over it. Jean ran him and he did wonderful. Jean spent most of the track making sure she didn't fall, as I warned her of all the things to watch out for. He ran the whole track without any help from Jean and finished very well.
We waited a little longer and I ran Blueberry when her track was around 35 to 40 minutes old. She started strong and really worked the track. I remembered to let the line out to 20 ft before following and kept it long. She worked her turns fine and at the last turn the track went through a line of trees, and she worked that turn a couple extra times before taking the last leg. She stayed strong the whole track and stepped on the glove at the end. The track was about 300 yds long and had 3 turns in it.
Jean asked me how I felt afterwards about Blueberry's track and I felt very proud of her. Blueberry is being so consistent and I have spent much of this last year studying my dogs so that I can read their signals. I feel very confident that Blueberry and I are ready and am just going to take it easy with her over the next few weeks so I don't stress her out.
posted by Kim at 10:41 AM
2 Comments:
I am so impressed with your devotion to tracking. It must be great when the weather is beautiful, but not so wonderful when it's not!
I guess you could call it devotion, but we all love it and have a blast. It is tougher when it gets hot and dry around here. More so for the dogs when it is dry.
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