Kyle Warren Dogs

6.5 hr. old night trail .85 miles, High Falls, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = Red

This was a really interesting trail! It was a 6.5 hour old trail laid at 4:30pm and ran at 11:00pm at night.  The subject sat out at the end for 1.5 hours and made a scent pool that was about 3-4 acres in size.  There was a little north wind about 1 mile per hour that you could hardly feel at all.  You can look at the weather report above.  I have placed circles on the chart when it was laid and when it was ran so you can see the weather during the time it aged.  Really amazing.  This shows that trusting your dog is ever so important once she has a solid foundation.  I don’t know a handler that wouldn’t of turned their dog around if this was a known trail.  The more trails I do the more I just believe that it can be 200 plus yards in any direction no matter what the weather conditions.  This trail makes sense when you look at the terrain and weather but it is still looked at as alien by non-believers.  She dragged me through this trail in 20 minutes.  What had happened was that once we started to head south we were in heavy mountain laurel on a logging road.  Maya stayed very committed to the logging road with constant headchecks to the west at least a dozen times.  Where you see on the map that she cut west for the first time is where she got off the logging road (that was gradually starting to veer southeast) and we went through terribly heavy brush in the middle of the night.  She hit a nice little scent pool that took us a good 4 minutes or so to figure out.  Really amazing stuff.  At our most distant point from the actual track we were 180 yards…. seen far more incredible just this one looks odd because she really had no crossover the track at all given the variables.  The subject left and re-entered directly from the west from a far distance.

16 hour old trail, .99 miles in Hancock, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This trail was a 16 hour old trail laid at 9pm and ran at 1pm the next day. It was one mile long and I went 1.56 miles to complete it in 42 minutes.

My scent article was a headlight.  The start was contaminated by 180 students constantly walking about the school grounds for the entire time this was aging.  The winds were varied but 75% of the time the trail was aging the wind was coming out of the southwest.  Where Maya’s trail starts to head north, we were on a logging road and the whole time as it turns out the actual track was about 100 yards away to the west where she gave three head check during that time.  She stayed on the logging road and then where you see our track start make circles 100 yards on both sides of the subject’s track— you’ll notice that the contours start to spread out east and west and therefore the scent picture dispersed.  I believe that the logging road earlier in the trail served as a very definitive line for Maya to ride on until that point.  She was behaving as if it was a turn so I casted her 100 yards on both sides of the logging road and she would not commit? So I rested her for 5 minutes and then casted her again to the east, she then worked it out, with no thanks to me.  I didn’t think to surge her farther forward because she ultimately gave me a negative but what happened was the scent spread out.  I should of made one large circlular cast rather than to side-logging road casts and I would have been out of that mess 15 minutes faster.  But a nice job. At our most distant point we were 130 yards off the actual track.

1.5 hr. old trail .65 miles heavily contaminated. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This was an amazing contamination trail! Granted it was only 1.5 hours old but around the start area is where everyone at the conference was camping; totalling about 25 people; including Maya’s subject.  Most of the 25 people had walked back and forth within the black track circle that I drew on the map several times.  The most recent was within 20 minutes of when the subject laid his trail.  The other trails on the map were on trails that where ran before Maya’s was.  The yellow trail was laid by Nelson at 10am.  Marnie’s trail is dark green and that was laid between 11:30am – 12:00pm.  The dark blue trail was laid by Ryan at 12:50pm.  The light green trail was laid by Hal at 12:50pm.  Sally’s trail is light blue (Marnie, Wayne, and me all went out on that one too); that was laid between 1:15pm – 1:45pm.  The large black dots on the map is where they hid at the end of the trails.

I ran Maya’s trail at 2:20pm; our trail is in red.  At her furtherest point from the actual track she was 25 yards off of it. Winds were mostly out of the WSW 5-10 mph. She was very studious and mega-focused!  She sorted through all the contamination around the camping area, which included the subject’s scent from camping there and all of the days earlier activities.  She wizzed through all of the contamination without difficulty.  When we popped out onto the road she quickly gave a negative past the turn and cruised up the side of the road with tremendous excitement.  She gave two headchecks to the west side of the road then cut into a 1-2 acre scent pool in really nasty brush that is difficult to manuever through.  Maya did great!  This trail was .65 miles, we went .87 miles in 29 minutes.

20 hour old trail, .72 miles in Gardiner, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This trail was 20 hours old, .72 miles long with no registerable wind until the last 5 hours of aging and then it was predominantly a south wind up to 5 mph.  I had one person contaminate the start about 20 minutes prior to running the trail.  This person went 100 yards up the trail then veered to the road and back to the vehicle.  It was cleared when Maya and smelling that person and she immediately came off of it all on her own. My scent article was a shoe sole that was two weeks old.  I never used an article that old before…. we also had a poor idea of where the PLS actually was so I’m not sure if the dog had to adjust to the dramatic age difference of the article to the trail or if we had a hard time getting started because we were a good distance from the actual starting area.  Rita was my spotter on this one and the subject had not saved her track at the start of her track so where she entered the road was an unknown all around.  I just kept casting Maya until she committed.  Every place she was right on the actual track was an area that is shaded 100% of the time and all other areas were open woods.  The wind seemed to drag the scent uphill despite the overnight aging with no wind…. one would assume downhill drag.  As we progressed throught the trail the road eventually sucked the scent down.  We traveled 2 miles and completed the trail in 60 minutes.

21 hour old trail, 1 mile, French Woods, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This trail was 21 hours old just under a mile in length.  Maya and I traveled 1.58 miles in 40 minutes to complete.  At our most distant point we were 195 yards off the actual track. The winds were variable up to 8 mph during the time this trail was aging.  The start was contaminated by a handful of people, as it started at a daycare building.