Training Track New Wood 1

This wood is a great training opportunity for us. A local landowner, Peter, has given us permission to use his woodland. It has no game shooting or deer stalking carried out on the place, but has a small abundance of Muntjac, Fallow and Roe. Just as importantly for us is has thick ground cover in the form of brambles, branches, shrubs and nettles. This combined with the deer population gives us very realistic training conditions.
We started on the field headland, and Heidi picked it up straight away, pulling very strongly on the leash right up to the right hand turn into the wood, which went down and up a very steep ditch. This was now problem for Heidi, but she had to wait for me to scramble through!
Once back together she carried on the right line, and I thought this was going to be too easy for her-wrong! After about 20m, she suddenly went off in totally the wrong direction, so I thought I would go with her idea for about 20 or 30m, hoping she would realise her error. Sadly she didn't and I had to bring an end to her ideas, and returned her to the correct line. At this point she did no more than go off in the completely opposite direction, but in a very convincing fashion, so again I thought I'd go with it for a short distance. Unfortunately it got us nowhere, as we started going round in circles, with the leash going round and round trees, so again I brought the proceedings to an end. Because of all this time wasting you will see I have left all of this out of the video so as not to bore anyone watching.
Not wanting to finish on a negative, I decided the best thing was to do was keep calm and quiet, but gathered up the leash with Heidi still in her collar, took her out of the wood by going well away from our track line, and came back down the side of the wood to point where we entered via the steep ditch. She immediately picked up the line again, only this time when we got inside things went a lot better, with her following the line very well, and only on one occasion did she think about going off on a different path, so I decided to correct her instantly, whereupon she went back on track with no problem, and continued very steadily and calmly all the way out of the wood, up and down another ditch, leading to her find just a few meters into a field headland.



Age of track: 12hrs
Length of Track: Approx 400m.
Type of track: Shoe and diluted blood.
Amount of blood: 250ml (1/2 diluted with cleave juice).
Wind direction: From ahead initially.
Wind strength: 8-12 mph
Temp: 18ºC
Weather: Dull, damp ground.
Time: 07.30pm
Age of Dog: 6 months

Conclusions:
Having Heidi work in this environment with lots of 'live' deer about was definitely a massive challenge for her. I could clearly see fresh slot marks everywhere when taking her through, they definitely weren't there when I put the track down. We both need more experience with this situation.
It also proves that taking the dog back to a point on the track to where you loose it, or if things go wrong can and does work.