Over spring break, I went with my grandmother to go tracking. We hadn't tracked in a while, so we figured we needed to go soon, and Spring Break was the best time to do it.
I got up at nine and got ready. Me and my grandmother drove to city park with her new beagle puppy, Dessi. My grandmother got out of the car and started plotting the track. We did what we call a blind track, where the handler doesn't know where the track goes. When my grandmother got back, she said, "I think I know what causes the scent to be pushed out!" I was surprised and curious, because we didn't know what causes scent to move the way it does. She pulled up a picture on her phone. It was of discoloration in the mud by a fence. It made the same pattern as the fence. "It's the wind!" She said. I understood immediately. The wind was what made the scent blow out, and it would've gone through the same path as the sunlight did. That's why it was on the ground away from the fence. I started applying this concept to other things. Like tracking in forests, for example. The tree's coverage wouldn't let the wind interfere as much, letting the scent spread out and take a wider path. Close to the ground, the tree's trunks are all different sizes and shapes, causing the wind to spread the scent out oddly. Every forest would be different to track in. It's really cool to think about. We had finally found out what causes scent to be this way. In one of my future blog post, if I can discuss all the things I wrote about in my first blog post with my grandmother, I would like to make one about the science of scent, using this new philosophy. Anyways, I got out of the car to track Rudi. Poor Dessi was whinnying. You may be wondering, why do all these dogs have odd names? Every dog has a tracking name based on their real name, with some meaning behind it. Rudi's is "Rudi von Henderhoss," because von Henderhoss is a German name, and Rudi's a German Shepherd. Dessi's real name is Destiny, (we just call her Dessi), and I helped my grandmother come up with her tracking name. It is "A Fortunate Does of Karma," which is our own definition of the word "destiny." We named her Destiny because she wasn't the dog my grandmother was planning to get, but it was love at first sight, like destiny. Cork's mother had to have a c-section, because he was stuck in her uterus. So, they named him Cork, with a tracking name of "Pebble Mist, Message in a Bottle." I went to the start flag, and told Rudi to lay down on the first article. I praised him and we walked on the hill. He was right on track for a little while, until gravity pulled the scent down the hill. Then he went off the hill, and eventually found the track again. He stayed on track when we went to the woods line too. When we went into the woods, and thought about the wind and the scent in forests, I realized how much I trusted him to lead me on the right scent path, and what a good tracking dog he was. We continued along the track, and soon came to a huge rain puddle. Since water draws the dogs in, we expected Rudi to drift off the footstep, but he kept going. We followed it on a hill, until he overshot a corner that went down the hill. He searched for it, but soon we went back to where he started and found it. A long leg later, he finished the track by laying down on a final glove. He was so good! I was very proud.
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Jillian M.I am Jillian. I've been tracking since I was eight and I love what I do. Archives
May 2017
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