The environmental picture

Over the weekend I taught a clinic to a great group of beginning tracking students. The dogs were motivated and the students were all fun and supportive of each other. I was much less tired than usual at the end of the class - but that could have been also due to the expert tracklayers who volunteered their services for the weekend!

One of the nice things about doing all this teaching is; in addition to getting to do something so fun, I also get to learn new things all the time. This weekend was no exception. We had a variety of freshly planted wheat fields to use for tracking. However the heavy rain and warm weather resulted in that grass growing more quickly than expected. So it was a bit taller than what I prefer to start dogs in. The first dog struggled going against the rows of planted grass, fortunately she was highly motivated but she struggled more than I wanted to see for a first time tracker.


freshly planted rows of wheat.....

So for the subsequently dogs, many of which were small dogs, we laid tracks with the rows rather than against the rows. This worked perfectly because the grass came together at the top, preventing the dogs from seeing the targets with food. But it did create a smooth pathway through the grass for the dogs to track. The dogs environment, as a result, helped shape the behavior that we wanted the dog to perform. The only initial goal was to have the dog become familiar with the start routine and to be aware that there was food out there, if they made some connection to the track then so much the better. However my main focus was drive and developing the beginnings of muscle memory for the task; accuracy and skill will follow....
 

Laying tracks with the rows of wheat...

 Each novice dog ran two tracks on Saturday and then we moved to a different area. One reason that we moved was because I wanted to find an area with shorter grass. While it did an excellent job helping us accomplish Saturday's goals I also did not want the dogs to get in the habit of just moving down the rows of grass, especially since they didn't know anything else at this point.

The interesting part was watching the dogs do their first tracks on Sunday, working against the rows of thicker, shorter grass. About half of the dogs hit the start article/food and then proceeded to head down a row, tracking with rather than against the row. Since the food and targets went against the rows, they quickly discovered that there was no payoff to going with the rows and reoriented themselves to the correct direction and quickly progressed. During the afternoon tracks each dog tracked through (against) the rows without difficulty.

However I found it truly amazing that TWO sessions of a brand new exercise could be so quickly generalized by all of the dogs and that so many of them had already developed a picture in their heads of tracking in the correct direction as being with the rows of grass. TWO SESSIONS.... Think what would happen if we continued to unknowingly replicate some environmental cue or piece of information to the dog for months or years. And then, still unknowingly, we took it away. Say at a trial or competition......

This happens all the time in every venue of work or sport - at least it can if we are not careful. What made it so noticeable this week I think was because most of the dogs in the class were small. To a small dog the world of tracking with the rows of grass looks like this:

when you are little the track is a forest with a path through the trees...

 That alleyway though the grass was a real path of least resistance to the little dogs. They switched over to working against the rows quickly but it was amazing and enlightening to see how quickly they developed a mental picture of what going in the correct direction looked like.

Everyone in the class was brand new to tracking and probably found me a little bit anal in that I am very insistent that they start their dogs exactly the same way each time. Every time I get my young dogs out of the car I do exactly the same thing - leash on collar, harness in my hand, give them a spot to pee and wait until they are done, go straight to the start, harness the dog a few feet from the start. I then run the leash through my hand and hold the collar with the same hand. Initially Using the other hand I drop a piece of food onto the start article and then later just point the start article out to the dog. All this is to develop that environmental picture that helps them get "dialed in" to the task I want them to do. And as we saw this past weekend, they notice things like this very well - whether we want them to or not.....