Page 26 - Demo

Equip Your Tool Kit: Add More
Power with GoodTraining Records by Nan Cochrane,Tracking Editor
Iperiodically get requests for TD certification tracks, and I make an effort to accommodate each request. I try to arrive at the site early on the agreed upon date so I can plan and plot the track before the tracking team arrives. I’ve found it’s easier on nervous handlers if we can get to business as soon as possible and save most of the conversation for later.
Tracking teams that arrive early have to occupy them- selves while I work on the track, then have to kill more time—usually talking to me—while the track ages. The conversations are always about tracking, or training problems. At times they can be very interesting, but if I’m unfamiliar with the team’s work it’s difficult for me to comment or be of much help. Idle chitchat about training problems also tends to wear on the handler’s confidence, and many handlers willingly share their doubts with me before running the track. Word to the wise—don’t say anything to make the certifying judge think they’ve wasted their time plotting a certification track for you!
One such conversation has prompted the upcoming discussion about training records. The trainer I met with was very unsure of her dog and talked in detail about the problems she was having. She also talked in great detail about what she thought her instructor was doing wrong. I finally asked her if she would mind showing me her training records.
She pulled out a tablet of paper. The page was dated, and three equally spaced vertical lines were drawn in parallel across the page below the date. A slightly differ- ent time of day was written under each line. The pattern was repeated—with a different date and times--in the middle of the same page, and at the bottom of the page. There was no other information on the page. The lines represented her first three training sessions. She plotted and then ran her dog on three straight tracks in each session However, the only information she captured was that she had walked in a straight line at three different times on three different days! The rest of her training
records were the same—outlines of tracks she had plot- ted with times and dates. She had no idea how or what she was doing. She dwelled on problems she could remember and blamed her instructor for her “troubles.” She was a victim of her own lack of information. At least she had some records. There are many tracking trainers who never even attempt to map training tracks—and don’t see the value in doing so.
We’ve already gone into exhaustive detail about the value of planning and plotting training tracks in past issues. Why go to all the trouble if you cannot remem- ber or interpret what happened? Unless someone else is training your dog for you, you’re in charge of your train- ing program. Be the master of your own fate. Empower yourself with knowledge. Training records are vital to success in tracking and are not difficult to develop, even for the most artistically challenged.
Why draw a map?
• To document exactly where the tracklayer walked. We point at the ground to draw the beginning dogs’ attention to each footstep on fresh tracks. Beginning dogs already know how to use their noses. We are teaching them to follow the scent we choose. As training progresses the exercises become incrementally more difficult—both for dog and handler. How frustrating and confusing it must be for a dog tracking the correct scent to be cor- rected by a disoriented handler! If it happens often enough even the most dedicated dog will quit, as if to say, “If you’re so smart, you tell me where it goes.” We cannot correct the dog when it is right
24 The Australian Shepherd Journal May/June 2005