Trained To The Rifle

Well a couple of days ago we continued Heidi's training to the gun. She had got to the stage of being totally not bothered about the .22 rifle blanks fired directly overhead, so today we moved on.
I started by getting Mrs Y to play with Heidi in the garden, and fired a few more .22 blanks around her, just to make sure everything was still okay-no problem. I then took a 12 gauge shotgun to the end of the garden (about 70m away), and fired a shot-no reaction. I then continued by firing at an ever decreasing distance, until I was directly next to her, while she was being played with. Absolutely no problem. Next up was the .243 (moderated) with one shot about 25m away, and another next to her, still no reaction. Cracked it! This was a momentous occasion not to be forgotten and a relief to me as I want Heidi to be a true staking dog, and accompany me when out, not sit in the truck all the time.

Heidi's 1st 500m, 7hrs old

Today I decided to lay a track on Ians field that had been cut about three weeks ago. As Heidi had been having a bit of trouble on tight turns I thought it would be a good idea to just stick to a square shape formation of track without too many turns, although most of her trouble seems to stem from the dry conditions we have been having, and the short vegetation in the areas of the tracks.
If I was to keep the turns to a minimum then I would have to add another challenge. This was by increasing the age of the track to seven hours, and the the distance to half a kilometre.

Things started well. I put Heidi's tracking kit on about 20m from the starting point, and as I led her to the area, she picked up the line with no problem, and I almost felt useless as I told her to 'track on'. We have used this field before, and it always seems to have been frequented by game of some sort, but never other dogs. As Heidi led the way all the leash was out, with good tension and her nose down. Then suddenly she stopped to sniff a specific spot for about ten seconds, which to my mind had no relevance to the line, then just as quickly carried on as before.

All went well until we approached the first left handed corner, when suddenly two rabbits bolted from the hedge on the left hand side, ran across in front of her, then dissapeared out of the field right in front of Heidi's path. This was a major distraction for Heidi, even though she has never been encouraged with rabbits, and never will be. Not that she ran after them, but was very curious and wanted to investigate the area where they had been. I stopped her on the leash and gave her a verbal sign of dissaproval. She thought about what she had just witnessed for a few seconds, and returned to the area of the line, whereupon after a bit of ringing, she got her nose down, dealt with the turn and continued on her way towards the next right turn. The way things were going I thought we were on for a record run!

Once we approached the turn, she got to 4 meters or so, and cut straight across the corner (above pic).

This would have been in accordance with the direction and strength of wind, so I thought this was pretty good going, and she took off up the field towards the next turn, with a good tight leash. Once at the turn, she went left instead of right, realised she was on to nothing, came back, picked up the scent, and started off at great gusto, only to stop after about 20m, turn round and come back towards me, having apparently no idea of where to go! After what seemed like an eternity of me just standing still and quiet, and her going backwards, forward, round and round, she got her nose down again and off we went.

This was on the home straight, no more turns as such, just a fairly straight line back towards the field gateway, and again it looked great with another tight leash.
However, we got to within several meters of her find, where I had gone off to the left at a slight angle to place her finish  and Heidi slowed right down, and went off to the right! After her sniffing and looking around, she came back to me looking bewildered.

After scanning my eyes across the ground in front of us, I spotted the problem. Yep, those wretched thistles, Hiedi's worst enemy, had just started coming through, and I had not noticed them when I laid the track. As you can see from the pic above, she just sat down and refused to move forward, even with a gentle tug on the leash, she just dug her heels in. I ended up going up to her giving praise and encouragement  whilst guiding through the small minefield of about 3m of the things.

Once through she almost dived on her find, as if to say 'I knew it was there, but its not worth the pain of the thistles'.

We then proceeded to have a great play with the skin, again trying to get her to speak at it by holding it above her and teasing her with it.

Age of track: 7hrs
Length of Track: Approx 500m.
Type of track: Shoe and diluted blood.
Amount of blood: 250ml (1/2 diluted with cleave juice).
Wind direction: From the right and ahead
Wind strength: 8-12 mph
Temp: 18ºC
Weather: Cloudy, rain previous night
Time: 06.00pm
Age of Dog: 4 1/2 months

Training Heidi To The Rifle

An important part of Heidi's training started a couple of weeks ago, and shall continue steadily until she becomes 100%. This of course is training her to the shot of the rifle.
I don't know if it is the Bavarian breed, but she has been great regards loud noise since day one. We did however make a point of banging and bashing around her from a tender age, this also included power tools and lawn mowers, and all of this seems to have stood her in good stead for this period of her training.
For the first part of the process I got the wife to play with Heidi at the far end of the garden, this was having a tug game with her, (Heidi's) favourite rope toy. I was then about 50m away, and with an old, worn out air rifle from my youth which I am lucky enough to have, I cocked it and fired it without a pellet in, up in the air. Whilst doing so observing Heidi's reaction, if any-there was none. So I continued repeating this process every couple of meters, until I was able to get right up to, and stand next to Heidi. She was not bothered in the slightest.After a few days we went on to stage two. This was to repeat the same exercise as before, but use a .22 rimfire with blanks instead of live rounds, and with the sound moderator removed. I have to mention that before going on to the rimfire we had a quick refresher with the airgun, just to confirm all was okay, and that she was not bothered in any way.
Again starting from around 50m away, I was able to get up to and above Heidi, firing the blanks towards the wall of the house, so as to increase the sound as much as possible. Again Heidi didn't even batter an eyelid, and showed no signs of being worried.
My next step will be to use a 12 gauge shotgun from a distance, and then follow up with a .243 centrefire deer rifle. As things are at the moment I cannot see that there will be any problems, but won't rush things, and keep starting from a distance.

Heidi's 1st 7hr track

Sadly I have not tracked Heidi for almost two weeks. The main reason for this being the very hot dry weather that we have been having recently, and I thought it best to give it a rest for a while until things changed. I guess also it was good to give Heidi a bit of a break, so as not to let her get bored and fed up with training.
Today I thought I'd give it another go as the weather was a bit cooler, with the objective to be time lapsed on the track as opposed to a longer distance. We also had a couple of small showers the day before which hopefully would give us a damper environment to work with. As usual I always try to think of something different for her to do, so managed to find some long grass and vegetation, combined with crossing a track (my driveway), as well as extending the lapsed time to 7 hours.
As usual things started well, with the tracking outfit put on a few meters before the starting point, letting Heidi try to pick up the scent on her own-no problem. By the way, she really gets excited now when I put my kit bag on, and even more so when her tracking kit comes out! Off we went with Heidi dealing with the distractions of birds without to much trouble, especially pigeons bursting out of the hedgerows. Other things to challenge her were fresh fox droppings, badger activity, and one of her favorite snacks, Roe droppings!
Soon we came to the first left handed turn, which she missed completely. This may have been because the wind was quite strong, and blowing straight towards us, causing her to be lazy and not keep her nose to the ground. I stood close to the turn, and let her carry on, and by the time she got to the end of the leash, she turned around, came back towards me and picked up the turn.
The vegetation had become taller and thicker here, which must have held the scent well, as she had no trouble at this section until she came up against her dreaded enemy-nettles. Her reaction was to stop, turn to look at me as if to say 'no way', then come back towards me. Unfortunately I had to cut this section from the video for it to be accepted time wise, but to get over the problem I rightfully or wrongly went ahead, flattened the nettles, and with plenty of verbal encouragement she continued on. We are a team after all!
Next problem perhaps predictably, was crossing the track (our driveway). I thought it would be a problem, so when laying the line I made a point of dripping a little extra blood here. When she came out of the grass to the track I guess the wind was blowing down it like a tunnel from the right, and the first thing she did was turn left and wander down the track. Eventually she realised the scent was not there and turned around, came back to the right point, which I had marked, picked up the scent and was off again with no problem through the very long and thick vegetation.

We went a few meters and came to what I knew was an acute right turn, which initially she didn't pick up, so I held back so as not to disrupt the scent line, and she very quickly got back on it. Things then went very well until we came to what must have been the only thistles in the area, which Heidi dislikes almost as much as nettles. Using her brain and nose, she tried to find a way round them, going this way and that, but at the same time she did not want to lose the scent line, and looked a bit frustrated. Her large team member at the end of the leash then gave her plenty of gentle, verbal encouragement, which was enough to get her through it, and back on the line.
Next up was the last right handed turn, which she had no problem with at all, and then it was a direct, and quick part of the track to the finish. Whereupon she acknowledged the skin laid out at the end, but was more interested in receiving her reward of a piece of liver!
After a bit of a game with the skin, and trying to get her to speak by holding it up out of reach, and teasing her, she was allowed to drag it a couple of hundred meters back to the garden, and have a bit of a chew on it.
An interesting point to note here on her development is that normally her life mentor, Corrie our 13 year old Lakeland Terrier has been the boss, and has alway been able to take any toy or food away from Heidi. Not so now! Heidi's instincts have now kicked in, and she is fully aware that it was her hunt, and her hard work that had rewarded her with this 'kill', and was not going to give it to another dog, no matter what. This was the first occasion that I had seen real aggression from her, and had I not interviened I think we may have had a dead terrier, and Corrie is a tough, hard fighter! I must mention I had no problem with Heidi at all, and could take the skin away at anytime, and do anything with her while she was playing with it.
Conclusions:
This was the longest time we have left a track yet, and she definately had big problems on a couple of turns, and I am not sure at this stage how to rectify this. In the early stages of training we started with gradual turns, and steadily increased their sharpness, so if anyone has some ideas I would welcome them.
The wind definately had some effect on these turns I'm sure, especially when coming out on to the track, so be aware of this tunnel effect when coming out into open areas!

Age of track: 7hrs
Length of Track: Approx 300m.
Type of track: Shoe and diluted blood.
Amount of blood: 250ml (1/4 diluted with cleave juice).
Wind direction: From straight ahead
Wind strength: 19-24 mph
Temp: 22ºC
Weather: Dry, cloudy, about to rain
Time: 04.30pm
Age of Dog: 4 1/2 months

Heidi's 1st 6hr track

I must be mad, or really keen to keep up with Heidi's training. Due to the current weather we have been having, which is blazing hot and very dry, I have not laid any tracks for over a week, mainly due to the lessons learnt trying to work a scent in these weather conditions in our last escapade. Therefore I made the decision to lay a track around 11.30PM, when things would be a lot cooler and there'd also be more moisture on the ground, following up with Heidi at 5.30AM.
As Heidi's last track was 4hrs old, my original plan was to leave it for about the same time, laying the track at 1.30am but possibly a bit shorter distance, just to keep her confidence up. However as I was extremely tired, Mrs Yabanjin suggested that as conditions were more in Heidi's favour, leaving it a longer time probably wouldn't hurt, and this would give me more sleep! Now Mrs Y is seldom wrong (if ever), so this was the plan.
I was hoping to lay the track by moonlight, but there was a bit of cloud, and the moon wasn't to early in getting up high enough, so great use of a head light was made. Just as well because due to some poor preparation of the blood being used my bottle clogged up a few times. Anyway I managed to get the job done and crawled into my pit around 1.30am.
Having got well prepared the night before I was up early enough to let the dogs have a run around the garden, before Heidi was singled out to go on her mission. Now normally she is always a little reluctant to have her normal lead put on, but on this occasion she seemed very exited and we had no problem. I think this is because she saw me putting my kit bag on, and there is now no doubt that she associates this with going tracking.
On this occasion the track I had laid was only a couple of fields away from the house so we walked out of the garden on to the farm path, and continued to the start of the line, in complete daylight, and getting wet footwear from the grass and vegetation that we were walking through-this to me was a good sign.
There was a very light breeze coming straight towards us, which I have always tried to avoid, with the intention of encouraging her to keep her head down to the ground looking for scent, rather than air scenting, but as always in life we can't have everything our own way.
I put her tracking collar on a good few meters form the start so I could let her try to pick up the first sign on her own. This she did with no problem, and we were off. The vegetation on this part of the track was a little sparse but strong enough to do the job, and the only thing that really startled Heidi, was a couple of pigeons launching themselves out the hedgerow for the first time of this day, but she just paused a couple of seconds, and then got back to work.
On this line there was only one turn, and that was right handed. Heidi came up to it okay and with a little investigation seemed to pick up the turn, then after a few meters appeared confused, went back to the turn area, and started looking around all over the place. Eventually, and with a little encouragement she got back on to it and all was well. I think the reason for this could have been the change in wind direction as we turned, which was also on a brow of a hill, so the air currents were probably acting in a strange way at this spot.
The turn also brought a change of length with the vegetation. The grass and weeds were a lot taller here, which I thought would have made things a lot easier here, but the exact opposite was true, and Heidi took a lot more time on this last section. Interestingly as she was pushing through the grasses, I could see the seed heads exploding, releasing dust and pollen all over her head and nose, which really must have made it tough for her to concentrate and pick out the scent line.
Eventually she tracked right up to the finish, whereupon she seemed very pleased with herself, especially after receiving her usual reward and having a game with the skin. This just left us about a ten minute walk back home, where we both enjoyed a well earned breakfast.
Conclusions:
When approaching a known or possible turn, try and keep well back, giving the dog as much leash as possible. This I think will help greatly by keeping the ground and surrounding area as undisturbed as possible if they momentarily lose the scent and have to back track. Also brows of hills. I had not thought of them being an issue before, but the effect of air at these points must be considered.
Age of track: 6hrs
Length of Track: 300m.
Type of track: Shoe and diluted blood.
Amount of blood: 250ml (1/5 diluted with cleave juice).
Wind direction: From straight ahead
Wind strength: 1-3 mph
Temp: 20ºC
Weather: Dry soil, morning dew on vegetation.
Time: 05.30amAge of Dog: 4 months