Practice search for Minnie

This is Minnie, our target dog for the day.  Please note that she is demonstrating a calming signal.  I very rudely hovered over her to take her picture, and she tried to get me to behave with this classic calming signal.  If you see a dog doing this, it means you are stressing her somehow, so stop what you are doing.  It could be a prelude to a bite.  Also, if you find a stray dog that you want to lure closer, so you can help her get home, look to the side like Minnie is doing, as a calming signal to the stray.

Kelsy started her search for Minnie at about 11 AM on Sunday, January 1st, at Lincoln Park in West Seattle.  This was a very fresh trail, with Minnie only getting a ten minute head start.  The temp was 33 degrees, with wind from the SE at 8MPH, humidity 41%, full sun with no clouds.  The ground was wet in places and frosty or icy in the shady spots.  The trail ended up being 3.27 miles, and it took us an hour. 

Kelsy set out on this search very eagerly, since the scent was so strong and fresh.  We passed about a hundred people and dozens of dogs who were also out enjoying this fine day.  Kelsy ignored almost all the dogs, knowing that they weren't the dog she was looking for.  A couple of times, there were people just standing beside the trail with their dogs in the sit position, and Kelsy saw them and started pulling toward them.  Since I saw she was using her eyes and not her nose, I held her back.  She wanted to charge up to them because this is often how target dogs and their handlers are positioned at the end of a practice search.  Except for those distractions, Kelsy did very well for the first two miles.

Then, the scent trail took us past a zip line, and Kelsy became totally distracted, not recovering for the rest of the search.  A zip line is a steel cable between two posts or trees, with a trolley that rides the cable and often a rope with a seat that a person can sit on.  It makes a distinctive sound as the wheels run along the cable.  Kelsy was fascinated by people flying through the air.  It stopped her in her tracks, and she wouldn't move on.  I finally prodded her on, but she kept stopping and turning back.  Although we never spoke, our non-verbal conversation went something like this:

Kelsy:  Holy cow!  Those people are flying!

Jim:  That's nice, sweetie, but try to stay focused on the scent trail.

Kelsy:  No, seriously, they are flying.

Jim:  It's just a zip line.  Nothing to get excited about.

Kelsy turns and starts on the trail again, reluctantly.  100 feet later, she turns and says: I think we should go back.  Are those people supposed to be flying?  Do they need help?  Should I chase them and bite them?  Should I be flying?

Jim:  (Exasperated sigh.)  It's nothing, really.  Now, honey, quit being a dumbass and get on with the search, please.

Kelsy pretends to search while she is really imagining the flying people, or perhaps imagining herself flying along the zip line.  Then she stops and says:  I really think it would be best if we went back and investigated the zip line.

Jim: (Exasperated sigh.)

After the zip line distraction, Kelsy took me off on a couple of tangents where I know that Minnie did not go.  I had to keep her on the trail the last mile.  When we looped around to the starting point, she did pick out Minnie while ignoring Daisy.  I rewarded her and praised her just as much as if I hadn't had to steer her for the last mile.  She got cheddar cheese for her reward.  Minnie and Daisy got some too.  I threw the ball for her to fetch a couple of times, as a reward, and then we went to West Crest park for another 20 minutes of fetching, as a further reward.

The humidity had dropped to 36% by the time we finished.  I'm guessing that I will see a correlation between Kelsy's search performance and the humidity, distractions or not.