04/16/2026
This video shows a practice track with Reagun. It was 170 yards and included 3 turns of 90° and one wound bed. This track was run at 24 hours age. This post is presented in two videos. The first video shows to the wound bed. The second video is from the wound bed to the finish. They show some good examples of her body language when working a track.
VIDEO 1
At 0:35 on video 1 after the start of the track, you’ll see her shake. She will shake when she feels stressed. Frequently she shakes when she loses a track or as an expression of stress release when she finds a wound bed or the hide/deer. This particular shake is not a stress shake. In this case she is simply adjusting her tracking vest according to her accompanying body language. Note that on the second video you will see a track – loss shake at about 59 seconds and you can see the difference in her body language there.
At 0:54, you will see her head rise and she is drawn to a scent item slightly up wind of the track. She breaks away from the track and investigates that scent item and then returns to the tracking effort.
At 1:23 she smoothly covers a 90° turn to the left.
At 1:56 on this track, she raises her head and turns her body. She then temporarily overshot a 90° turn to the right. She returns to the track for the correction. Leading into her correction, you can see her head come up and you can view more of her side profile. These are common signals from her that she is off the track.
At 2:58 you will see her cleanly cover a 90° turn to the right.
At 3:04 she locates the wound bed. Here you will see a stress relief shake, and a lot of expression from her tail.
VIDEO 2
At 0:50 on this second video, you will see her step out of the woods onto a two track trail. This change in vegetation has received more sunlight and a change in wind direction. You can see her head up and more of her side profile and her stress shake, indicating she has temporarily stepped off the track.
At 2:02 Reagun locates the hide at the end of the practice track. Her tail becomes expressive and you’ll see her stress release shake again.
Note: Normally our practice tracks are set up to challenge the dog. I was surprised how smoothly she took this track at 24 hours age. I had laid 2 practice tracks the day prior with similar challenges. The second track was more challenging for her. I believe this was due to environment with greater sun and wind exposure.
