Three things: Ozzie! Thanks! Tracking!

Mom here: first our apologies for not visiting - again - it's been silly bizzy around here, although today (yay!) it's pretty mellow! Second, we wanted to show you a couple of photos of the super-rapidly-getting-better-OZZIE!!! She's playing and dancing energetically once more and will get her outer stitches removed at the beginning of next week. We are stunned by her amazing recovery and thank all of you so much for sending such powerfully wonderful well wishes - they helped hugely! Thirdly, this post is also about something I tried with Sam a couple of years ago - tracking. We just introduced Avalon (and Sierra Rose) to it yesterday and all doggies loved it! We actually traveled with Sierra Rose and her mom, meeting our good friend and experienced tracking person, Elizabeth Waldspurter, who set the courses for the dogs and instructed us. I want to thank her immensely for helping us get such a great start! I also want to thank Sierra's mom for taking the pictures of Sammie and Avalon trying out this super canine/human "sport"! (There are photos of Sierra as well, but we'll let Sierra post her version!) Okay... our turn!

Isn't she lookin' great???

You look like a zillion "treats" Oz! That's our Sis!!!

***

So... tracking! To make a long story short, we dogs (as we surely know well) have better scentacles (our word) than hoomans have. In fact, the area of our doggie brains devoted to analyzing the things we smell is 40 times bigger than what a person has - how about that? We know a completely different world than humans, and for this reason, it is furry cool to do tracking. Yesterday, Mom set us loose to do something she had little control over! In our friend, Elizabeth's words, "You can't really correct for tracking. They know what they are doing." Love it! So the object of the game is to sniff our way down the course that Elizabeth makes and get the glove... or... foodables on the glove!

We were urged to watch our teacher as she "set" the course for us. We started small - on a plot of grass in front of a house. Some wind came up and the grass was damp. It's supposedly good to set up a track somewhere that is fresh - as in no humans or animals crossed it to mess up our snooters. Sometimes it will look like we're not following the path correctly, but wind can make us veer up to 3 or even 6 feet off supposedly. (Anyone out there who might be able to correct us on any of this info, let us know...)

In Avalon's words: Finally Mom said, "Avalon, Track!"

And off I went. I sniffed here...

I sniffed there...

And I backtracked and sniffed thereabouts!

Until I saw the prize, but still kept my sniffer to the ground...

And oooooooh... what sweetness to reach the prize! What fun that was!!! I hoped I could do it again and again! Back to you, Sammie.

Okay... so it was my turn. I wasn't spose to look at the camera, but I'm a flashy beast hound. Okay... I'll get serious!

Here I am in earnest... watching Elizabeth set my course. We are now in a less "contaminated" meadow!

Elizabeth returns from dropping the "dime" hot dog foodables along the track. She has stomped on the grass, while dropping a hot dog every few feet, and has placed the glove at the end of the trail. I'm supposed to follow HER scent along the course, leading to her glove, see? (the hot dogs help...). She indicated to Mom that I can go!

And we're off! How I love this activity! And there really is no correcting. Mom's read that she could "help" me a bit more - you can read here - or here for further info, but basically, she has to trust my snooter - hah! Isn't that pawesome?

Meanwhile, Avalon really, really, really wanted to do it again and again without a break and made her wishes loudly known throughout the neighborhood. We will be doing this again soon and we are definitely excited! Huge woofs to Elizabeth - thank you so much! Here are a couple of movies of us tracking!