Apple Acres Sagebrush Raven TDX

TDX-traordinary!

by Alicia M. Keegan

Much to the surprise of both of us. . .

On April 2, 2000, much to the surprise of both of us, my Sheltie, Raven, passed the Tracking Dog Excellent Test sponsored by the Santa Clara Dog Training Club. One week later, she earned her final leg in the Open Agility Class, to become Apple Acres Sagebrush Raven, TDX, OA, PT, HRD II-s.

I never set out to get a TDX on Raven. When I got her in 1994 as a five month old pup, I had never put a Tracking title on any dog. But I was training Britches (Sagebrush Little Britches, UD, TDX) for her TD at the time, and I took Raven along for the socialization. Her start in Tracking was not exactly propitious. She wouldn't work for hot dogs, she wouldn't work for cheese, and she certainly wouldn't work for Rollover™. We finally coaxed her into working a five-step track with hard boiled egg dropped in every step. Hard boiled egg is VERY messy. She treated the glove at the end as if she expected it to bite her. We put her breakfast, with hard boiled egg, underneath the glove. "Raven the Reluctant" I called her. Not exactly a TDX candidate.

By the following summer, Britches had her TD, and Raven could handle a two-turn track with a nice ‘sit’ when she came to the article. Sometimes–if the phase of the moon was right. If she was in the mood. Other days, she simply declined to track. I don’t think I would have persisted with her if I hadn’t been working another dog.

Raven works a track.

She started to get it all together!

The year after that, she started to get it all together. After she ran several good tracks in a row, I started thinking about a TD. By the end of the season, Britches had her TDX, and Raven was becoming increasingly reliable. Most of the time. Except when the moon was full. Unless there were any interesting critter burrows around. I decided to make a try at certification. She passed. By then it was May, and our tracking season was over.

When we started up again in the fall, she was tracking well, but we had to work through a couple of problems. When she got bored or discouraged with a track she would serve notice that she was quitting by sitting. A "sit" was her article indication. She had generalized this to using a "sit" to inform me that she was finished tracking, whether she had found an article or not! Pretty smart of her, but not exactly what I had in mind. Then she started doing some serious "crittering", sticking her nose into every burrow and rodent tunnel along the track. It got so I could easily tell the difference between tracking and crittering, and could call her off with a "Get out of there!" I didn't even have much trouble restarting her the day she flushed a jackrabbit.

So with some trepidation, I entered her in a Tracking test in February 1997. She started well, but had trouble with the third turn, and gave me her "I quit" notice twice by sitting. But I was able to get her to restart and she finally worked out that turn. She made the last turn before I realized she had come to another corner. She found the glove easily, to earn her TD on her first try. She had accomplished what I asked of her and her tracking career was over.

Her tracking career was over–or so I thought!

In 1999, Molly (later CT Sagebrush Molly Brown, UD HS AX OAJ VCD2 STDs HTD-IIs HRD-IIIs) earned her TD. In the fall, I began training for Molly's TDX and started my new pup in a tracking class. Raven wanted to go along, so I decided to take her to class with the youngster. She was very pleased to be tracking again. She still did some serious crittering. She still gave her "I quit" notice once in a while when she didn't want to work, but on the whole she progressed very well. By March she was doing three- to five-hour-old tracks, working obstacles well, and generally looking as if a TDX were possible. On the day before the entries closed for the Santa Clara TDX test, she worked out a particularly difficult obstacle to find an awkwardly situated article. Buoyed by our success, I entered her in the test. "Am I being foolish?" I asked instructor Barbara Adcock. "She has as much chance as anyone else," Barbara replied. This was not a reassuring answer, since the TDX pass rate has been pretty low this spring out here.

Raven made the draw for the test.

Molly was the eleventh alternate. The following week the weather got hot and Raven did one of her worst tracks in months, refusing to start, having trouble with the first two legs and quitting several times. Not a good omen. In the week before the Tracking test, I used lots of hot dogs to motivate her starts.

Test day was clear and promised to be hot. Raven drew the last track, leaving me several hours to work up a good case of nerves. Raven doesn't do hot. The heat threatened to bring out the snakes. I don't do snakes–at least not when I'm out with my dogs.

Raven searches for a turn in a creek bed

Raven's first law of energy conservation:

Finally our turn came. I took Raven up to the start flag, and gave her the article to smell. Then I held my breath for a couple of minutes while she stood around looking like she hadn't a clue why she was out there. (Raven's first law of energy conservation: never do anything if you can get out of it.) Finally, with a minimum of searching, she started down the first leg. But before she even reached the end of her line, she came back and sat in front of me. When I told her to track, she cast around a little, then went right down the first leg again. This time she kept going, and I started to breathe. Fifty or sixty yards later, she stopped abruptly, turned around, came back to me and sat again. This was starting to look like the shortest track of all time.

Raven's second law of energy conservation:

We waited out a pair of horseback riders who came down a nearby path, then I told her to track one more time. She started working slowly but very steadily. (Raven's second law of energy conservation: never do anything faster than you have to.) When she came to the first turn, she worked it out easily. When the track crossed the path where the riders had passed, she cast briefly up and down the path before continuing straight into the tall weedy grass on the far side. The second leg contained a set of crosstracks, but I never saw her indicate them. After the second turn, she went down into a ditch, checked out a large burrow and came up the other side without stopping. A little farther along, she nosed a sock, her first article find, and sat. I praised her and offered her water. She declined. Then I got out my water spray bottle and started to wet her down. "Keep your dogs cool!" the judges had said. Raven thought I was out of my mind, and resumed tracking just to get away from the water bottle.

Raven's third law of energy conservation:

When Raven chooses to track, she is slow, methodical, extremely accurate and therefore VERY easy to read. She does an absolute minimum of casting at turns. (Raven's third law of energy conservation: never walk farther than you have to.) Fortunately, once she gets started, the track itself is highly motivating for her. She ducked her head into every critter hole she passed, but they didn't stop her from working. I, however, had to check out everything she indicated to be sure it wasn't another article. She negotiated the third and fourth turns without trouble, passing the second set of crosstracks somewhere along the way, then tracked right up to the trunk of a large downed tree lying across our path.

Raven's fourth law of energy conservation:

She put her front paws up on the trunk, and sniffed the air. Then she backed away, and started casting for a way around the trunk. (Raven's fourth law of energy conservation: never go over what you can go around.) After checking out the high grass to the left of the tree, she broke off, came back and put her paws up on the trunk again. At that point I lifted her up. She stood there looking down the other side. I figured she didn't want to jump into the hefty stand of thistles down there, so I got up on the trunk to lift her down.

Raven TDX is pictured (left to right) with judge Dan Lawer, Alicia Keegan,
judge Carole Blanz and tracklayer Debi Best

That's when I saw the rattlesnake!

About four feet from Raven on the other side of me. He was just a little rattlesnake, maybe fifteen inches long, and he didn't do anything threatening, just lay there along the trunk, not even bothering to rattle. But he was dangerous. I did what any sensible dog person would do: I picked up my dog. "Snake!" I yelled to the judges. "Is it a rattlesnake?" they asked. "I think so," said I. "Wait!" they told me. When the judges came up and checked out the situation, they told me to carry Raven down off the trunk well beyond the rattlesnake, and let her cast for the track again. Raven thought I was acting a little peculiar, but she went right back to work. She detoured around the next and smaller set of branches, made another turn and tracked out to the second article, a coin purse. This time she realized what was coming as soon as I reached for the spray bottle. She hurried down the track just to get away from her crazy owner.

Raven The Reluctant had her TDX!

Two more turns and she sat at the final glove. She had finished a track half a mile long and three hours old. I hugged her and took off her harness and told her how wonderful she was. The judges and tracklayer rushed up to congratulate us. Raven was unimpressed. She looked at me as if to say, "What's the fuss and where's the food?" But I was proud of her even if she was nonchalant. The impossible had happened: "Raven the Reluctant" had her TDX.