Tracking Dogs

WHAT IS A TRACKING DOG?

A tracking dog is a dog of any breed or combination of breeds that has developed it's sense of smell through practice and experience, and is fully proficient in following a certain human scent.

TWO TYPES OF TRACKING

Foot Step Tracking is done by dropping food in the track layer's footsteps as the track is laid, with a food reward at the end of the track. This is a very precise form of tracking but is also a very slow method which is not very practical when looking for the human. This method is widely used by people entering CKC competitions to obtain tracking titles on their dogs. Because this is such a slow and methodical style of tracking, these dogs can only track for approximately 1,000 yards before tiring, so would be of little benefit as a search and rescue dog.

Tracking Through Drive is an entirely different style of tracking. These dogs are expected to overshoot corners because they are moving at a fast pace. They will then give a negative or loss of track signal from five to 20 feet past the corner. The most common form of a negative takes place when the dog is running along with his nose to the ground and quite suddenly the head comes up off the ground and the dog begins to circle. When you see the dog give you a negative, your job is to stop your forward movement and get your dog back on the track as quickly as possible. You can do this by circling the dog to cut the track again. THe motivation for Tracking Through Drive dog is that there is always someone at the end of the track.

FUNDAMENTALS OF TRACKING DOGS

The best trained tracking dogs are first taught the soft-mouth approach of retrieval. This means that you have taught your dog not only to find people, byt to indicate and pick up articles which may have been dropped by a lost or running person. These dogs will pick up empty gun cartridges, kleenex, clothing, glass etc. there is not much they miss. They can also be trained to indicate these articles by sitting, downing, or barking rather than picking up the object to prevent the dog from getting hurt and to prevent them from tampering with evidence.

Not all tracking dogs have been taught to retrieve, therefore we must teach the dog to indicate articles and sit when they find them. These dogs tend to miss more articles than the retrieval tracking dogs.

It is wise to teach your dog to differentiate between articles and people when told to track. This can be done using two different commands such as: "Find" for articles, and "search" for lost people.

Dogs should be taught to track using a harness since this lets the dog know what his or her job will be. It also gives your dog more mobility and is far less tiring on them.

Scenting and Tracking
Canada West Canine Centre