Part 1
On June 9 through 12, 2011 the North American Teckel Club held its Spring Hunting Workshop and Conformation Show. As part of that event, John Jeanneney, Darren Doran and I were responsible for laying out and organizing the DTK sanctioned Blood Tracking Tests. This year the blood tracking tests were 20- hour-old Tracking Shoe Tests. Each blood line was 1000 to 1200 meters long and was laid by the tracklayer walking with tracking shoes on and putting a squirt of blood on the ground every 10 meters or so after the first 50 meters where there was only blood at the hit site. Three and a half ounces of blood total were used for each line.
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| Tracking shoes |
There were two 90-degree arching turns in each line. Two simulated wound beds and four marking points were dispersed along the line as well. For this test we used 3" diameter slices of birch wood soaked in blood as the marking points. We laid 1" cubes of deer lung on them when the line was laid but as usual, the lung was long gone by morning but the scented wood was still there for the dogs to find.
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| Marking points |
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| Darren is grimacing in leg cramp pain as John smiles happy to be able to help. |
To be honest, I did not feel properly prepared for entering my dog in this test. I had had a very busy spring and did not get the training time in that I would have preferred leading up to this Tracking Shoe Test. As I havd written about before I spent quite a bit of training time getting my dog ready for a 20 and 40 hour VSwP in February and the Deer Search competition in April which were both blood only, no tracking shoes, events. After the Deer Search Competition in April where we came in a very disappointing 3rd, when I went to switch back to tracking shoes for the NATC event, I noticed a little problem with Eibe's work and I was only able to get three training lines in to work on it. It had gotten better but not really yet to my full satisfaction. I don't like to enter any event that I do not feel fully prepared for but there was a low entry for the NATC event so against my better judgment I entered anyway.
Friday
There were two dogs entered for Friday's test. Eibe and I were up first. I knew already on Thursday when the lines were laid that the test conditions would be difficult on Friday. The forest floor was very dry as it did not rain for quite some time. With a "blood only line" I would not have worried but when a line is laid with tracking shoes and minimal blood I have had difficulty in the past. When the ground is hard and dry I do not think very much scent is transferred from the tracking shoe to the ground when the line is laid. In training I sometimes see my dog in these conditions actually do more of a search from blood spot to blood spot than actual tracking the scent from the shoes. To top off the dry conditions when laid, Thursday evening it rained several times quite hard. Again, with a blood line it would not be a concern but it has also been my experience that tracking shoe lines do not hold up to rain as well as blood does. I knew Eibe would be able to find some scent but I also knew it would be very hard.
Well as soon as I started Eibe on the line my suspicions were confirmed. It was going to be difficult. It took Eibe 13 minutes just to get started and go the first 50 meters including her circling back to the hit site twice until she finally locked in on the track. Eibe found and cleanly indicated a marking point about 60m after she finally got locked in and went another 200m without much trouble. From that point forward the next 500m of the line was a series of short runs of 20 or 30m that she could track relatively easily and then dead spots were there was apparently little or no scent so she had to basically search through the dead spots to find the next piece. When I looked at the gps map of our track afterwards I could see that in addition to the normal small, few second long checks that a dog normally makes when tracking, Eibe had 8 large checks along the way that were 5 to 15 minutes long each. Two times she was just stuck in those big checks in the dead areas and I did a directed search with her and cast her out around the dead spots and she was able to re-acquire the line.
Eibe found and solidly indicated both wound beds and 2 of the 4 marking points along the trail. Actually, the second marking point she found was a big help for her. She was working hard to find her way through one of the dead spots and the wind shifted a little and she caught wind of the marking point and went directly to it about 10m away from where she had been searching. She indicated it by standing over it rock solid and I think she was as proud of it as I was. From that marking point forward the last 150m of the line was a little easier and went relatively quickly compared to the rest. I found out later from the tracklayer that he had gone a little light on the blood on the first part of the track and had pretty much of the 3½ ounces left near the end so he put it down a little heavy to use it up by the end. That's probably why it got easier.
The whole line ended up taking us 1 hour and 58 minutes to complete. I was very grateful that the judges gave me that time, appreciated my dog's hard work and recognized her determined focus to keep working under the very difficult conditions. I was not really sure how much time I was going to be allowed to have to finish the track because the DTK rule as to time limit has changed several times back and forth over the years. The latest translation I had said a limit of 1½ hours but as with most things the judges always have some discretion. At 1 hour and 15 minutes into the test I knew I had at least 300m still to go so I asked the judges if I was under any time constraints. If I were then I would just push my dog along and hope for the best. When the judges said time was not a factor then I relaxed and let my dog continue on at her own pace.
When it was all over and the judges finished conferring, Eibe and I were awarded a score of 92 Prize I. The score is composed of 3 parts, Method, Accuracy, and Desire and my score reflected that the judges felt Eibe's method was excellent, accuracy was very good and her desire to track was excellent. I was very happy with the score and it was what I was expecting and what I thought my dog deserved after working so hard.
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| GPS map of Eibe's track - click to enlarge |
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| Judges John Jeanneney (NY), Mme Agnes de France (France), and Teddy Moritz (NJ/DE) with Eibe and me after a successful 20 hour Tracking Shoe Test. |
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| Patt Nance (OH) and Viljo |
Great job Andy.
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