Tracking's Progress
I haven't said much about tracking here lately (I haven't said a lot lately, but that's a different story). Charming Billie and I have been tracking all summer and we were making decent progress until about a month or so ago when Billie decided she had forgotten everything she ever learned and--hey! aren't those birds pretty?
This is very much Billie's learning style and it's so frustrating. She doesn't refuse to do something; she doesn't even resist, really, she just looks at me with a round-eyed blank expression as if to say--you have never asked me that before; I have no idea what you're talking about. It's not a training plateau, it's a wall of something that's not exactly resistance masquerading as incomprehension. In other training I've persisted with the training, through several weeks of that 'look.' (I have no idea what you're talking about. If I did know what you were talking about, I'm sure I'd do it, but I don't) and eventually, she doesn't just decide to 'get' it again, she gets it at a far higher level than she did before the training wall, as if she's been looking at me blankly while simultaneously absorbing everything I say.
So that's what I'm doing right now, but it's very tricky in tracking since in tracking even more than other training, you don't really know what they know or what they think you're trying to teach them, you never really know what they understand, you only know what the outcome is.
When Billie looks like she's wandering aimlessly and not paying attention, she might, in fact, be tracking up a storm (the odds are against it, but you never know). Should I be patient, should I be firm, should we lay off for awhile, should we go back to square one--and, hey, look at those birds!