From Left to Right: Judge Sharon Rosenkoetter, Gillian Salling, Eik, and Judge Robert Brown
From Left to Right: Judge Sharon Rosenkoetter, Gillian Salling,
Eik, and Judge Robert Brown
THE LONE RANGER!
My tracking experiences with Eik vom Clausberg were different than with all but one of my dogs because Eik was imported from Germany with a SchH3 title. He arrived in this country in January 2007 and lived with his owner in the Texas hill country. I co-own the dog. His owner wanted a TD on him and asked me if I would take him and do the tracking training with him and try to get his title. I agreed and brought him home at the end of August and started his tracking training. I knew he could do SchH tracking if he already had a SchH3 but he probably hadn’t tracked since he got his title in April 2005. I wanted to enter him in the Springfield MO test on October 7th but the entries closed early on September 12th, so the pressure was really on to get him ready in time. I didn’t think he was quite ready to certify when Charlene Dunn said she could meet me in McKinney and lay him a track on September 3rd but in spite of the dry conditions and having him wait to let two cyclists cross over his track on the bike path, he did pass! His performance was not what I would have liked but I knew we had time to really work on his problems if I could get him entered in the test and we tracked almost every day!
As luck would have it, we did draw a track in the Springfield test! I was concerned about the alfalfa and lush green vegetation as we had nothing similar around here to track in. A second worry was the wind because there had been very little wind while we were training, unlike most times in Texas! And the third biggest concern was that two of the TD entrants were females in season and Eik has been used extensively at stud!!! So I was afraid to even get him out at the headquarters but he had done his bathroom breaks at the motel grounds so I was hoping he would be OK.
We drew track #2. The first dog failed, which does not inspire confidence! When I went to ask the judges if it was wet enough that I should wear rubber boots, I found out that my track had been messed up because the tracklayer had gone to the wrong flag and missed out a turn which would have been the only left turn. So now we had to wait for track #3 to age and the wind was getting stronger and it was also getting warmer by the minute!
Just before I got Eik out I checked the wind direction and was glad that I did later on! The track was in lush green vegetation and the first leg was with the wind. Eik settled into the track very nicely and was going so fast that I was running! It was so wet with dew that I was afraid I would slip and fall but I knew when he went fast he would be less likely to be interested in creatures that might be hiding in the grass. The first turn could have been either direction because it was in an open field but he had a convincing turn to the left and then another. So I was thinking the 3rd turn would have to be to the right. But he indicated to the left again! My brain is thinking, “We can’t be going back towards the 1st leg”, but he was convincing, so off we ran! The 4th turn was to the right but as we start to head up a slight incline I can see the start flags for the next track, so again I’m thinking we can’t go very far in this direction. Then he stopped and lay down so I went up to him but didn’t see a glove. That was very scary, but then I remembered the wind direction! He was heading into the wind so I presumed he smelled the glove way before he got there. So I gave him a command to track and off he went again. He went far enough to pull me again a few yards and then lay down again and this time I could see the glove between his paws before I went up to him! Wow, what a relief that was!!!! He completed the 460 yard track in 7 minutes!
The very next dog in the same field spent most of the first leg trying to chase mice so I knew there must have been mice on Eik’s track. That dog failed. The next 3 dogs also failed. So Eik was the only dog out of 6 trying for the TD who passed! So Jim Freeman called me “The Lone Ranger”!!!! And out of 5 dogs trying for the TDX only the last one, who actually ran the alternate track, passed. So in spite of the difficulties, we had succeeded and I was sure glad that I did believe in my dog because out of all the tests that I had either participated in or judged, I had never seen a track shaped the way Eik’s track was! Coincidentally, the last track I had laid for Eik in training, was the very same shape as the one he got in the test!!!! It was also a great coincidence that the dam of his 6 day old pups that I had left at home, Greta von Fernheim TD BH, got her TD the first time she tried at the same club’s test 3 years earlier and she also drew the 2nd track!!!!
Submitted by Mrs. Gillian M. Salling, AKC Tracking Judge #316