Urban Tracking 101

Today I was lucky to be able to join some very experienced trackers for some urban tracking coaching. It was not that long ago that I thought of urban tracking as being too difficult and the titles seemed too far out of reach. Although after passing the preliminary CKC tracking title, the TD with both dogs this year, I do have my sights set on the more advanced CKC tracking titles. So when I had the opportunity to get some first hand coaching from some experience urban trackers, I jumped on it. We did a couple of very short grass to pavement tracks for Eros today, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well he took to the pavement. I did a very short one for Arlo too, and he also did well. Arlo has already had an introduction to hard surface tracking. I also had the opportunity to watch a few experienced dogs do an urban track, two of them were "blind" tracks. Very interesting indeed!

Later on in the day we moved over to some open fields, and did some field tracking. I was lucky to have a "stranger" track laid for Arlo through varied terrain. He did very well, and only missed one article. He did have some trouble on corners, but finished the track, and indicated all of the other articles (GREAT for Arlo!).

Overall it was a great day, with beautiful weather that was unseasonably warm for November in Ontario.