Loot

Dottie's FH medallion and certificate.

Fancy and Pie's TR 2 certificates.

As the story "The Longest Track" attempted to convey, Pie and Fancy passed their TR2 and Dottie passed her FH.  The FH is very similar to the TDX. The TR2 is easier than the TD, but is aged the same.


Neither Pie or Fancy are easy tracking dogs.  Fancy is getting better.  She actually has desire to track now.  Pie gets so worried about doing it right that she becomes stressed and can't track at all.


Therefore, I was very happy that they both passed!  Pie got a nice score of 94 out of 100, and Fancy had a 77, which is not a great score (70 is passing) but she still passed, and did not have the lowest score possible!  She lost points not only for the typical overshooting of corners, but because I forgot to practice on the 33 ft line.  I practice with a much shorter line, so she got to the end of the long line, and kept pausing to look back at me and wonder what I was doing so far away.  I didn't say anything (extra commands would be more points off) and each time she got back to work.  But it showed she did not have enough intensity on the track.  And at one point she became discouraged (you can't talk to them at all) and laid down.  More points off.  That time I did give a command to get back to work, and she did.  She worked really had and was a good girl.


Pie's second half of her track was pretty much perfect.  At the begining, she almost went into stress mode.  Her mouth opened and she started to pant, with her ears 1/2 back, and she goes back and forth accross the track, pretending to look, but really just retreating into her mind.  I thought we were about to be done, but somehow she pulled herself out of it, smelt the track and we went on.  Phew!


Dottie's track I covered pretty extensively in my story.  I felt really sick all morning.  Getting up before 4 am always does that to me, but the stress didn't help either.  I didn't feel better until finally we started down Dottie's track.  Dottie was amazing and is such a wonderful tracker.  I can trust her 100% and she tries really hard.  She is calm and methodical and does not give up.  She got tired at the end, but kept going.  It was really long!  I wish I had my GPS watch to know how long.  My knee started to hurt at the end from going over the furrows and just the general uneven ground.  Dottie scored a 93.  In my opinion, that is a great score for an FH!!


I have such amazing dogs!  They make me so happy and keep me busy.