On Saturday I put in a TDX track for Page at a nearby office park. This track was 865 yards long, and it was aged 3.5 hours when we ran it. The red line is a cross track I put in 50 minutes after I laid the original track. The obstacles were the road and sidewalk, a woods which we turned in front of (there's an old farm fence running through that woods), then a black-topped walking path around the ponds that I tracked on the edge of once then I went onto a second time. There were changes of cover from a variety of medium cover to short grass. Page started very strong, but I noticed she didn't pull as hard as she does on fresher TD tracks. She also went farther past her turns before indicating loss of scent. Page rarely goes 2-3 ft. past a turn before losing scent. But on this track she did what is more typical and went 10-15 ft. past a turn.
Page check the first set of cross tracks to the left and then practically leaped off of them to the original track like she was on fire! She was horrified she'd gone onto something she wasn't supposed to. She searched a little wider for the track near the second set of cross tracks, so I'm wondering if the cross track confused her a little after she got past it on the second leg.
Once she refocused and found the third leg, the road obstacle was not any problem at all. She barely worked the transition before heading straight across the road almost dead on the track.
Page didn't indicate the first article as well as I had hoped. She actually tracked past it to the left about 5 ft., but I held her until she found it and indicated it. It was a different article than I had used the last two tracks and the article had no food in it. This likely resulted in a weaker indication. However she got a treat from me when she did indicate it.
The turn before the woods line wasn't a problem and neither was the turn through the opening. However, on this fifth leg, Page suddenly indicated a cross track and took it to the left very far to the woods. I went with her even though I knew it was wrong. I wanted to see how far she'd take me, and if she'd take me into the woods.
I will say had I not known this was a cross track (because I laid the track), I would have thought Page railed a turn and we were going into the woods. However, Page stopped at the woods line and didn't go in. She worked the leg back and then came back to the woods again, which on a test track would have made me think we went into the woods. I took a couple of steps toward her and the woods, wondering if she was going to go in. She thought more about it and then angled back to the track and continued strong.
I do wonder what I would have done had this been a test track. Would I have encouraged her into the woods? I don't think so because she never fully indicated that's where it went. And when she went back to the original track, she was very convincing and showed me good tracking form once she was back to it. I hope I would have been convinced once we were back on the track it was correct.
Although Page investigated down the side of the hill towards the pond, she handled both sections of the walking path pretty well. These obstacles happened well into the track, so she worked a little harder because she was tired but worked them out. Her article indication on the second article was stronger, as was her article indication for the final glove.
In all this was a very nice track. Page ran it in 25 minutes, and she did a lovely job. She's a solid tracking dog!
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