Who trains who?

[dOg]

I've been working on my pup Hugo's tracking...beginner stuff.

We've only been at it a few months, and skipped alot of days due to snow cover. But the grass is finally greening and I had a day off, so I went and layed a longer track than we've ever done with 4 turns today.
He has some confusion on turns, but found his way thru the first 3 and nailed the 4th, the straights were good. I was happy, he was happy, we went home.

I made some coffee, and was sipping it when I decided to do a test.
I decide to take Rani, my 4 yr old female back to the track, to see what, if anything might happen.

She got out of the car, sniffed the air, nosed the ground, tracked our steps now 40 minutes old on cement
to where we walked up to the track, did the whole track, reclaiming every morsel of bait Hugo missed. Then she tracked my steps from laying the track back to the car!!!

She's never even ever done a single beginner's scent pad! She air scents a lot instead of deep nosing the ground, but man, it was more amazing than I thought it might be.

One Thursday last year some kids were here visiting, and they were playing with the dogs and frisbee's...
so I cut the grass on Sat, never finding them. On Sunday, I asked Rani, "Where's the Frisbees?" Her nose hits the ground, off she goes. A little while later she's sitting under a pine out back , rising up on her hind legs and sniffing. Sure enough, one is stuck in the pine. I get it down. Life is good.
So then I ask her to go find the other. Nose to the ground off she goes, running all over. Ends up near privacy fence lying
there, looking at it. Numbskull that I am, I thought she was tired and ignored her. Little while later, I asked her where it was
again...she goes over to the same spot turns looks at me sits, looks at the fence, looks back at me, as if to say (not sure this was not telepathic) "right there, dumba$$! like I said before!" I laugh, go into the next door neighbor's yard and sheepishly find it exactly where she said it was.

That's when I knew this girl could track like nobody's business.

Yeah, in tracking, it gets real obvious, who is training who.



Makes me think of one guy's sig that used to say:
"My dog is smarter than I, this makes for some interesting training!"