February 18, 2024 TD Tracking Test

At Mather Regional Park, Sacramento CA.
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Marked Catalog.

Judges Meg Azevedo & Jenny Cuccinello
Chief Tracklayer Meg Azevedo
Secretary and Day-of CTL Karey Krauter

The TRACS 2024 TD tracking test was held on Sunday Feb 18, at Mather Regional Park in Rancho Cordova.  A little scary leading up to the test – the terv club test two weeks earlier was in the middle of an atmospheric river (AR) and literal bomb cyclone (look it up – defined by a particularly steep drop on atmospheric pressure in a spectacularly short period of time), and the forecast for our weekend was another AR coming in saturday night and another one coming in sunday afternoon.  We had a little judge rearranging when we realized we didn’t want to risk flying in the originally scheduled Oregon judge (THANK YOU for being willing, Jill Jones!), if the weather was going to be like the terv test, where airline flight schedules were trashed.  Our Meg saved our butts yet again and stepped up to judge, THANK YOU Meg!  This was on top of Meg already having done all the heavy lifting as the original chief tracklayer for the test.  ALSO big thank you to Meg’s co-judge (and soon to be off provisional status!) Jenny Cuccinello. 

So what actually happened was, all the weather happened overnight friday and saturday and sunday nights (a little dicey!), but beautiful all day during saturday plotting, and beautiful all day during sunday testing. The wind picked up sunday midmorning, was about all we saw.  Perfect cool and overcast dog weather.  Bottom line: 4 our of 6 tracks offered were passes!  The suspense is WHICH dogs passed, since the same dogs were entered the weekend before at SacDTC’s TD test – where all but two of those dogs passed, and all the same dogs stayed entered in our test.

Track 1 was run by Renee St Denis and her 3yo labrador Pongview Mawksmoor Mister Mischief, successfully completed in 7 minutes with only a little messing around the first corner.  Renee was sad to have missed passing the week before at the SacDTC TD test at Mather, so this was a sweet bounce-back.

Track 2 was run by Jenine Winderhausen and her 1yo Belgian Shepherd dog York de Bruine Buck, successfully completed in 20 minutes.  Excellent patience, Jenine!  The dog was bouncy and challenging at the start, but then settled down, then hit a particularly boggy area second-to-last leg where Jenine’s patience worked its magic.  Strong fast final leg once they got out of the bog.  This dog also passed at SacDTC last weekend so this is her TD2!

Track 3 was run by Naomi Kennicutt and her 1yo labrador dog Bayside Labs Slick Dapper Dan, successfully completed in 6 minutes.  Nailed it after some puzzle solving at the first corner.  Another very sweet pass since she didn’t get the pass the weekend before at SacDTC.  This is this dog’s second tracking title this year, having picked up their TDU title last month at the terv club test at Elk Grove! 

Track 4 was run by a 1yo bearded collie bitch who performed cleanly for the first 3 legs and then just couldn’t figure out that third turn.  The wind had picked up by this time, mid-morning, and they had significant gusts blowing up their butts, which means there is no scent cone to follow.  They called it themselves, giving the dog a break after some good hard work.  This track was a bonus already, since they had earned their TD at the SacDTC the weekend before.

Track 5 was run by Paul Brink and his 2yo flat-coated retriever bitch Flyway Farms Raven’s Merry Prankster, successfully completed in 4 minutes flat.  Paul’s long legs served him well, he had to run to keep up, AND he didn’t have any face plants in the rutted and rocky field surface!  Paul was also one of the passes from the weekend before.  TD2!

Track 6 was run by a 2yo german shepherd bitch, in winds and gusts that had picked up considerably by the time this last track was run (at 10am), and the wind direction was again exactly right up this dog’s butt.  Excellent choice on the handler’s part, taking advantage of the TD restart rule (with the judges’ permission), and who knows if the wind from their rear was a factor, but today, the dog just couldn’t settle down to work the track.  The track was a bonus already, since they had earned their TD at the SacDTC the weekend before.

This test had the best tracklayers ever, three of you laying two tracks each!  I finally got to see what “rolling tracklaying” looks like, and it was good:
+ First tracklayer (Colton Meyer) lays tracks 1 & 2, fifteen minutes apart.
+ Second tracklayer (Rita Crawford) lays track 3 when track 1 starts running, and lays track 4 when track 2 starts running.
+ Third tracklayer (Alice Webber) lays track 5 when track 3 starts running, and lays track 6 when track 4 starts running.
Very cool to see how this meant there was no stress about a later track aging out if an earlier track took a long time to run, nice.
HUGE thank you to Colton and Rita and Alice for your weekend!  Also huge thank you to our driver Nancy Bougher.  THANK YOU all for supporting tracking and keeping the rest of us enthusiastic about it!

FYI/Warning for future tests at Mather – the glitch at this test, and ALSO at the SacDTC test the week before, is that the kids in the neighboring residences seem to now be collecting our flags each weekend for their trophy collections.  The week before, SacDTC lost 8 of their flags overnight Saturday night, and TRACS lost a similar number this weekend.  Lesson learned: on plotting day/Saturday, mark the plotted track with cheap pin flags, not the fancy 4ft club stakes.  When the track is actually laid on Sunday morning, the tracklayer can take the fancy 4ft stakes out to replace the appropriate pin flags as they lay the track (start and direction stakes for TD tracks, just start stake for TDX tracks).

Secondary heads-up/warning – Just when we were feeling reassured that we would never see the sheep again that trashed the fields last year (and caused multiple test postponements), just when we were reassured that the county would never again approve such an incursion, and the Splash vernal pool conservatory located across the street would be aggressively reinforcing this: the sheep were back again in the week before the test!  They were in an adjacent area that we don’t use, exactly because the county says that area is too fragile to support tracking dog trampling.  I kid you not.  They are apparently there without any kind of permission (could they be hired by the neighboring residences thinking they are doing fire danger mitigation?), and Splash is ON IT.  Don’t make them mad!!!