Decoys

Kelsy trained at Renton Village today, starting at the PIMA school.  Valerie and Pearl had laid a scent trail about 24 hours earlier.  Darlene and Buddy set up as a decoy at the Discount Tire store.  Bill and Bear made a short decoy trail at the Evergreen building.  Sky and her owner stayed at the end of the trail as a final decoy when Kelsy reached the end.  We stated at about 3 PM, with the temp around 48 degrees, little wind, and no rain at the moment.  The ground was damp from recent rains.

Valerie walked with us to tell me when Kelsy went off trail.  For the first 200 yards, Kelsy was exactly on the trail.  When she hit the scent trail of Bear, she accelerated and tried to run to him.  Had this been an actual case, I would have interpreted that acceleration as either a fresh scent of the target dog or excitement over a new scent trail.  Following it, I would have discovered that it either was the target dog or not, and if not, I could go back to the point of divergence.   When we got up to the power line towers and over by Wells Fargo, Kelsy briefly jumped from the out trail to the back trail, and then she crossed over again to the out trail.  The two trails were less than twenty feet apart at that point.  She followed around the Holiday Inn, and I could tell she caught the scent of a little white dog I had seen people walking.  I could tell because her gait changed and she started looking instead of smelling her way along.  When we came to Buddy's decoy trail, she glanced in Buddy's direction, but she didn't veer from Pearl's trail.  Going by a restaurant, she got off the trail by about twenty feet.  Then she zoomed right up to the target area.  She did run up to Sky first, but realized it was not the right dog.  When she charged up to Pearl, who is a puppy, this made Pearl nervous.  After I rewarded Kelsy with treats, she and Pearl got to meet properly, and Pearl relaxed.  Kelsy's treats this time were McNuggets, and she really liked them.  Kelsy stayed on trail over 90% of the time, and the two times she strayed, I could tell that something was different.  Again, I watched for when she was using her nose versus when she was using her eyes.  The trail was about a mile long.  I forgot to set my GPS at the start, so I don't know the exact length.

After Kelsy, I worked Zeke.  I made the mistake of placing the scent article on the dirt, and he was more interested in smelling the dirt than the scent article.  In the future, I should be certain to place the scent article on pavement, to avoid any contamination.  I picked up the scent article and had him smell it in my hand, which seemed to get him started on the right trail.  Zeke works with his nose to the ground much more than Kelsy does.  Zeke stayed right on track most of the time.  He was distracted by the scent of Bear, and I had to pull him back on course.  He cut off a big loop when he jumped across from the outbound to the inbound trail.  When we got close to the end, he saw Karma, who was being a decoy, and he would not go any further until he could check her out.  Once he smelled that she was not the target dog, he continued on.  At the end, he checked out the first dog he saw.  Pearl was hidden, and instead of going to the next visible dog, he followed the scent trail to Pearl's hiding spot.  Zeke did very well.  Reading him is different in many ways than reading Kelsy.