Since attending the Joanne Fleming-Plumb Seminar I have been working on several things with Dieters tracking. The first and foremost being to create a "calm and confident" tracking dog that works through things and stays focused. I have also be very conscious not to create opposition reflex and to vary where I hold the line. I have also tentatively stopped doing articles on the track while working on these things.
Unfortunately work has created a situation where I don't get to train as much as I used to, and thus he is only tracking perhaps 1x per week (perhaps 2x if we are lucky). No to make things more exciting, I also was badly bitten by a cat last night and do not have full function of my left hand so it makes handling Dieter's line a bit awkward.
Today I laid a track that was about 200-250 paces in damp grass, that was aged approximately 25-30 minutes. It was a mix of straight lines, gentle arcs, 90 degree corners and one acute one. It had a medium amount of food on it and also had his first official cross track right at the start (about 25 paces in) that had been laid about 5 minutes prior to starting. In hind sight, perhaps it wasn't the greatest idea to ask for the cross track at the start, however after a bit of a messy start, we got through it and off we went.
Video to Come - Husband needs to assist in how to efficiently load it onto the site.
Still anxiously waiting for that video.
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