Liesel Weapon earned a 'Gauntlet' badge yesterday doing a difficult track with some planned and unplanned obstacles...Distance was 2.5 miles - really wanted to see how she would handle surface transitions as the road to my house includes packed ice - mud - and pavement. She did a fantastic job detailing through the transitions - despite seeing deer cross the track and sprint off (thats what I get for tracking in the evening...) and patiently working around traffic...

There was a scent pool right before a bridge that through her off for a couple mins. In addition to the pool - fly fisherman showed up with their dogs creating fresher tracks and tons of contamination - despite that she found the exit trail of POI and kept champing...

At mile 2 road turned to pavement. She did a great job staying on scent finding information in wetter sections of the road and areas near the snow where scent collected. Everything went fantastic until neighborhood dogs charged at us. Didn't know these dogs but hackles were up and I had to rely on obedience to work LW through this 100 yard stretch while keeping these random dogs away from her...

DESPITE ALL THAT - We took a breather at a road crossing and let nerves calm. Once she started whining to get back on track I gave her a 'get to work' - she immediately picked up the track on pavement - crossed the road and took off like a rocket. The ending was contaminated with cross trails because some awesome locals saw my trail layers hunker down under some trees next to train tracks and assumed they were homeless and/or in need and walked out to give them a warm meal :) How nice was that?

This track ended up being WAY more complicated than anticipated but this little GSD rocked it. Proud of her!