how to teach tracking

[robsaun317]

for those of you who do tracking how do you teach your dog to track things. my female and i will play in the house where i will hide her toy and she has to find it but i keep it to one room. after a while though it gets hard because our smell ends up everywhere so she has to really work to find things. i would love to hide things in my backyard for her all 2 acres but i dont know that she would track that far. so some tips and advice would be greatly appreciated.

[AngelBunny]

robsaun317:

You've asked the right question at the right time--Moxie & I just started (AKC) tracking!

She & I attended a 2-day seminar earlier this month given by Miles Garrod, AKC tracking judge. Miles' belief is that any dog can track because all dogs live by their noses. This doesn't mean all dogs will like tracking because they're all individuals, but all dogs have the ability to track.

He explained the trail a tracking dog follows contains 3 ingredients:

1. natural scent (made up of breath & body odor)
2. artificial scent (soap, deodorant, hair spray, cologne, cigarettes, et al)
3. track scent (crushed vegetation and disturbed earth caused by the track layer walking)

As time passes and the track ages, the specific proportions of these 3 scents will vary. The scent will also move as other factors work on it--wind and rain, for instance.

Miles got us started by giving us 2 flags on dowels. We walked out to a clean area in the field ("clean" as in uncontaminated by people walking) & stuck one flag in the ground. In a straight line, we paced out 30 paces, put in the 2nd flag, then paced out 10 more paces. Before putting down the article (sock or glove that we used & didn't wash), we looked back at our dog who was being held on a leash & waved the glove around while calling to our dog enticingly. We put down some yummy treats in a pile, put the article over the goodie pile, and put more yummy treats on top of the article.

Then we carefully turned around & walked back to our dog on the exact path we just walked out, to double lay the track.

We waited about 2 minutes to let the air scent settle, then took our dog up to the first flag, & told the dog to track. (My command for Moxie is "Find it!")

Dogs in the class did one of 5 things:

* ran right out the article w/o putting its nose to the ground
* ran around
* did nothing
* put its nose down & tracked spordically out to the article
* put his nose down & tracked steadily to the article

To help an inexperienced dog, Miles recommends against laying a track in your yard because all the scents will confuse your dog.

The Tracking Club of Massachusetts (438 Lowell St, Wakefield, MA 01880) put together a really solid 80-page booklet called "Tracking! A Practical Guide for TD and TDX." It costs $10.

Miles had several copies at the seminar; I'm glad I bought one. It's been useful and helpful and is a *practical* resource. It doesn't go into lots of scientific explanations as to the composition of scent & the dynamics of wind--it offers advice on how to start tracking your dog. I recommend it.

[moondog]

Angelbunny, What's the best surface to start with? I realize it needs to be uncontaminated, but would dirt, grass or asphalt be best for beginners?

[lblax]

actually to start tracking you should start with scent pads heavily trod down a 4ft by 4 ft area and lay several bits of hot dog in it take your dog to the scent pad and give him the track command as your dog finds the food he will wonder from the pad but as he does he will not find food or your scent hold the leash and when he comes back on the pad praise heavily then move to a nother pad do 3b or 4 pads per session for several days. then from there leave tracks starting short and straight with food in each footstep as they get better lenghten the track and less the food. then from there youu introduce corners --articles and such. get yourself a good book on schutzhund tracking. the dog associates your scent withb reward. with the previously stated seminar method i feel will come up with bad results because the dog has no reason to keep its nose to the ground and this can only be taught with scent pads!!!

[MARYDVM]

I started my first tracking dog in the manner described above. It certainly works. But I started my second dog (who went on to earn her TDX) in a different way. This method was described in a working dog article, it didn't have a name per se, but I call it the cold track method to differentiate it from the above mentioned method that uses a fresh or "hot" track. This method starts with the assumption that dogs instinctively know more about scent and tracking than any human ever will. Tracks are never double or triple layed - the dog can detect a single track quite easily, and by walking back over the track you can confuse the novice dog who is learning to judge the direction the track is going in by the pattern of scent (heel impacts hardest and first, followed by lesser scent from sole of shoe). At the TDX level the dog is brought up to the track with no guidance given on which direction to proceed. A dog trained only on single tracks will never have any confusion about which direction to go (at least mine never did).
This method starts with a dog that can do an inducive down. A track is layed for 40 paces in a straight line.Five different articles are needed. At the start, and at every 10 paces an article is dropped. At the end of the track, which you can mark with a stake if you are unsure of your memory or track mapping skills, circle wide away from where you laid the track to get out of the field. Then age the track for an hour. This actually makes the track easier for the dog to detect (unless the ground is rock hard or a strong wind is blowing) because the air scent is gone when the dog is brought to the track - all the scent is on the ground, and most dogs will drop their noses and start to follow with a little encouragement. Have some meat in your right hand as you walk to the track. As soon as he notices the first article, bring your hand down in front of his nose with the command to down. End up with your hand holding the treats on top of the article. The dog may be confused at first, repeat the down command if needed, but don't reward until he lies down, then open your hand and let him eat the meat off of the article. Once he's finished he may circle around a little looking for more goodies, let him be sure there's none left, then encourage him to move down the track. Get some more meat out and be ready to repeat the process again as soon as the second article is seen. Usually, by the end of the track the dog has its nose down and is actively searching for the article. Repeat this track daily until the dog is tracking from the beginning and knows the drop will be requested when an article is found. (My girl started dropping automatically at the articles on her third track) Then begin lengthening the legs in between articles. As the track gets longer I drop an occasional piece of food on the track to maintain a high interest level, especially when working corners. This method has worked extremely well for me. By the time you are working behind your dog at the end of a 30' tracking lead you will have a dog that never misses an article and reliably drops with it right between his paws. This method is especially good in the snow, because you can see the track and the snow traps the scent around each footstep.

[Doug Wendling]

Here is a very good article on teaching tracking. I have had great success with this method, both starting young dogs and fixing older dogs with tracking problems.
http://www.schutzhundvillage.com/nose1.html

I have used this with both sport dogs and police dogs.

[Storm]

Note that kennel union tracking is different to Sch/IPO tracking and pictured differently by the judges. Kennel union tracking will struggle for high marks in Sch/IPO, generally, but Sch/IPO dogs have a good chance of scoring high marks with kennel union tracking, generally. The difference is the method or foundation for the training. The way the dogs are taught to absorb a track differs, intensity differs, rythem differs etc. Sure you may say my dog tracks but there is a difference in the approaches. A dog must not only learn to follow a track but what makes a difference is the way that a dog takes to the track and "works" the track intensely. For the purpose of the sport and point system we require this but sure there are many other applications for tracking where style differs for that specific reason.

[robsaun317]

just responding i wanted to make sure i have started this tracking correctly. i took the advice of all these post plus the things i have read on this site as well as books. i went outside and put 4 4x4's together to create a box that was 8x8 i walked all over the grass and smashed it down pretty good i scattered a small handful of kibble in there than i came and got my dogs. my female at first wasn't to interested and my puppy male quickly found food. than my female started in she wondered out of the box once and quickly returned my male puppy just did not have the attention span it takes for this he would rather just run around and relieve all his energy. my female seemed to do really well though. my question is should i use the boards or is that setting an artificial boundry and do i keep moving the box to different areas around my yard i have 2 acres so that is really not a big deal. she did get a little side tracked when she found some deer dung. my other question is you as a handler what do you do while your dog is in the box scenting do you just stand by the box or walk away. i kind of stood back and kept saying "find it" and let her do her thing. is this the wrong or right thing to do. i am really interested in this sport i was considering getting a special toy that she only gets to play with for a few minutes after a succesful track is this a good thing to do. more advice on this sport will really be helpful.

[lblax]

i wouldnt use the boards just make the scent pad keep your dog on lead and plenty of encourgment and praise. to keep your dogs attention i wouldnt use the kibble use frozen biljak or hot dog chuncks they will be far more intense over these and learn quicker

[robsaun317]

now i have read on lots of other sites that the hot dog is such a strong scent that they just pick up on that and not on the actual scent of ground disturbance. as far as the boards go i think i will get rid of them for future training. keep the input coming everyone please you guys are so full of great tips and techniques.

[AngelBunny]

moondog"

"The ideal tracking area is covered with lush green grass about three inches high" according to my Practical Guide. Brown, dried out fields or short, close-cropped lawn present more difficult conditions. Although often used, parks and schoolyards aren't especially good for tracking because of the close-mown grass and variety of conflicing scents usually present.

Miles suggested we don't make a habit of tracking in the snow because the dog will learn to follow the footprints and you, the handler, can start relying on what you see, instead of learning to read your dog.

He also suggests tracking once/week.

[moondog]

Thanks, Angelbunny. :) No snow here, but lots of 3" grass! The article that Doug linked us to is really helpful in understanding what it's all about for the dog, too. It hadn't occurred to me that a scent could be biologically meaningful or biologically meaningless to the dog, but now that I've seen it put into words it makes total sense!

I'd like to try it with Luna, not for competition but just to give us a fun activity that's not too stressful on her with her PLE. She always picks up the scent from all the little critters when we're out walking and sometimes I'll just let her follow it while I tag along. I saw a cat a few weeks ago way up the street that Luna wasn't aware of and sure as shootin' as soon as we got to the place where I saw it, her nose went straight down and she was definitely following a trail. Looks like she's pretty interested in the biologically meaningful stuff! :D It would be fun to see her learn a new skill. :)

[Doug Wendling]

Their is a part two to that article in case you did not see it at the bottom of the page. If you stick with this it works great, but going to food that has strong odor to it defeats the whole idea.
Here is part two, http://www.schutzhundvillage.com/nose2.html

[moondog]

And thanks again :)......Part II was equally interesting. I had no idea that dogs generally can't make a distinction between humans by scent! I think my dog has the goods to do the capping reasonably well, and I'll be finding out for sure by following the exercises. One more question, please? Luna is on a very restricted diet for health reasons and things like kibble and dried liver aren't on the menu, so..... would hard boiled egg whites be okay to use? They don't seem strong smelling to me, but I'm not a dog either! If that's not a good choice, I could always use a hammer on a milkbone! :D

[Doug Wendling]

Their is not much odor to them, should be OK. You just don't want an over powering odor.