Tracking lesson #2

Weather: 11 degrees, light rain

We did two tracks today. The first was double laid, about 30 steps, but contrary to previous tracks, the dog was held out of sight so couldn't watch it being set. Walter was not quite the calm, mature guy he was last week; instead, today he yapped his fool head off in protest while I was setting the track. Then he went right to business and found his reward, the ball tug.

The second track was set in view of the dogs, about 40 steps but was only single laid. He overshot his toy and went to the flag a couple of metres past it. Once he noticed the toy we had another rousing game of tug.

Definitely he gets a lot more excited by a game of tug than by eating treats, no matter how delicious. Today was the first time he was rewarded with play instead of food so hopefully after a few more tracks he'll get more excited about the actual finding of the toy rather than waiting for me to pick it up and initiate the game.

We did a step counting exercise. For me, 100 metres = about 120 single steps.

Homework: Set longer, single laid tracks, out of sight of the dog.