Using a GPS for k9 tracking/trailing is extremely useful. I used my ForeRunner on this track to record what the track-layer did and then to run the track. The track was run semi-blind since I only knew the direction of travel and also that he was making a right-hand loop. Once we got into the woods, things became very hairy. Generally, I don’t create a movie out of a track, but we spent a good hour running this track and I really wanted to go back and evaluate what happened. The movie is playing 120x speed and color indictes speed. We lost the GPS signal a bit at the very end so I chopped this movie off at that point. At both the turns where we spent a large amount of time, we also had water breaks.
Zooey, did a great job and never got frustrated or lost concentration. Pretty much she was constantly looking for the track. In the places where the subject could walk a straight line, it was easy for her to be on track and move quickly. But most of the track was actually very difficult since the ground cover was boulder-y and also because thickets of mountain laurel drove how we moved.
The track is about 4 or 5 hours old. We ran it at about 2PM and the temperature was in the 80s. First you see Chris laying the track. He placed flags at turns. Then you see Zooey and me run it. I was so happy to see the flags. At one turn, I had to let go of the line to crawl through some thickets and saw Zooey hanging out by the flags. Probably, the best moment of the day! Despite how bad it looks from this point-of-view, I was very pleased with how the dog performed.
Motionbased is a web service where I upload my GPS tracks for fitness and SAR workouts. They have a nice track playback feature using googlemaps. Here’s a short track we ran last night. It was only in the low 80’s, compared to the track we ran in the early afternoon where the heat index was around 100.
Click to go to the map and play. I remembered to turn my GPS on during the backtrack while laying the track. It’s also interesting to see that the speed laying the track was 2-3 mph, while running it was about 4-5, except where foliage was thick.
Here are the stats that motionbased gives you:
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