8 hr. wilderness trail that aged me 10 years…
Blue track is subject's, red is Maya's, yellow and black are Jana's and Sarah's
This trail was very abusive on my body…. it was 8 hours old, 1.1 miles long, the terrain was moderately to densely wooded with pines, the snow depth varied from one inch to one foot and there was an crazy scent pool at the start in this creek and drainage area that had steep sides and very rocky. It took me 47 minutes to complete this trail. Anyone that thinks that they want to do trailing should of been on this one with Maya and I… I had my sidekick Liz that kept up with me here. Poor Rita had to take it easy bringing up the rear due to her sprained ankle. My ankle didn’t feel so hot either but I had a GSD with jet fuel up her ass to move me through the woods. The most interesting part of the trail that I only find interesting now… haha — is we had a woman, Stacey along for the trail…she hung back with Rita, but there was one time when I waited for Stacey and Rita to catch up with Maya, me and Liz. After that rest for a few minutes, I sent Maya back to work and she was obsessed with not going anywheres. Now, this trail was laid at 8:30am and at that time most of the trail the subject was walking on top of the snow. I had identified the subject’s footprint that was just visible on top of the packed snow, Maya keep sniffing it then going back to where we came from but frantically in scent not casting looking for scent…. I was confused — until…. Stacey asked, “would it confuse her if I was wearing the boots that Jen (my subject) wore on the way down to training today (they were Jen’s extra boots that she had worn the same day) ….. I kept my cool and said, “you stay hear until we are several hundred yards ahead of you.” Yep, that’s what is was… Stacey wasn’t Jen but Maya was obsessed with going in circles in this one area and backwards a bit, like I never have seen before? Jen’s shoes were still emitting odor of her that were relatively the same age as the trail with fresher crushed scent of the shoes. That was a first AND A LAST time for this scenario. Live and learn I guess. It took me about another minute to get Maya back on track then she cruised to the end with ease. The objective for this trail was to have two hot crosstracks of people that Maya always trails pretty much on a weekly basis in Jana and Sarah. The more Maya trails a person the more she associates that person as high value in terms of reward. So I will try to use these individuals as crosstrackers occasionally too. As it turns out —Maya thoroughly investigated Jana’s trail but pulled off. When doing this exercise it is best to really make 90 degree intersections from the subject’s trail in hopes that dog will be fairly true to the trail for this experiment. Make the crosstracks pretty hot… these were less than one hour old.
