A while back I read a book called the Art of Racing in the Rain.  This was a book about a race car driver told from the perspective of his dog.  The protagonist was a bit of a damaged soul but the perspective of the narrative was somewhat humorous.

Today was not so much about humor but it was raining a bit and we were training not racing.  I'm learning every day that yes, the dog does know what she's doing.  The adage we hear frequently is to "Trust the Dog".

The past couple of times out on the training front have been frustrating for the handler(me).  We were trying to get Gracie to start to work on searching areas.  To do this we put out a subject, get the dog amped up a bit and work back and forth across the area.  The intent is to get the dog's nose downwind of the subject. We also want the dog to be actively searching the area.

The last time out, I messed up the search conditions and was working the area from North to South going back and forth East to West and then returning West to East.  When we set up the problem the wind was from the South so this would have been a good search grid.  When we got going the area we were working had wind from the West so gridding in this fashion didn't get the scent to the dog until we had finished most of the area.  As we were setting up for the last pass she got the scent and finished the problem.  By that time she had moved to my side and wasn't working very well.

Today we wanted to see what we could do to get her to actively search so we dropped back to some familiar drills.  In an open field we sent the subject off across the field with the wind setting up to blow the scent across the line that the dog saw the subject take.  Then we turned her around so that she didn't see where he ended up. He doubled back and hid up wind of this line while the dog was not looking.  Then we released her to search him out.  I walked away from the line to try to get her to cover the whole field and she checked in with me a couple of times but kept heading off to the point she last saw the subject.  The scent apparently was piling up on a horse trailer that was parked in the field and when she got to this she got a good hit and was off searching the scent cone for him.  2 minutes later she found him, came back and gave me her indication and ran back for her playtime.

We repeated this with a short  problem in the woods.  The wind was a bit iffy in the woods doing some changing and it died a time or two and completely changed direction once.  She was able to solve this on the second pass and was working out 50 yards from me the whole time.  Just what we wanted to see.  It seems that I wasn't walking fast enough to get her out working. 

So, now I have a solution to my problem, all I need to do now is repeat this as many times as possible over the next few weeks.  Any one want to volunteer to be a subject?

Thanks for listening.