Chris, the best long coated german shepherd ever ;) , tracking in Stevensville, Ontario.

Tracking with your German Shepherd Dog

There should be a law requiring people to work in tracking with their german shepherd puppies ;) or scentwork or urban tracking. Just imagine, city parks, green spaces designated for tracking. Special Facilities for seminars with Steve White or Ed Presnall. Indoor plumbing when you need it most - at a tracking trial. ;)

What is tracking, anyhow?

In tracking, and I work my dogs in CKC tracking , both Urban and regular 'field' tracking, we teach our german shepherd dog to follow a designated scent. The track is laid by the track layer, following first the rules of our training plan and in a trial, the CKC trial regulations and judges instructions. These regulate the shape, length and age of each track, as well as the number of articles the dog has to find and indicate.

Starts in CKC are simple, as there is a starting flag with an adjacent scent pad that starts the track. The dog then finds the direction the first leg of the track and has to follow the track, indicating the articles that the tracklayer has left. **

Steve White (1) describes tracking as chain of three behaviours - Search - for the starting point - Follow - the designated scent - which consists of a human and a ground component - and Report - the location of the article.

At the end of the tracking behaviour chain...

is the article indication . This can and should be taught off the track - Steve White recommends to work on this until your dog loves the article!. The reason is simple, as the article can then be a reinforcer for the tracking. Start out teaching your puppy to touch the article with her nose, then add the down. Then move the article slowly onto the ground and add some distance. If you have ever taught a target behaviour then you know that they can indeed get very strong; allowing you to use them to your advantage in behaviour modification.

Taking a look at William Syrotuck SCENT AND THE SCENTING DOG - and Steve Whites tracking seminar materials, we can see that there are two components for the scent picture - the human scent and the ground disturbance, which is made up of crushed vegetation, and can obviously vary greatly depending on the conditions, and vegetation present.

The fluid & vapor from crushed plants is the dominant scent, increasing in intensity during the first 15 minutes. Then it reduces, but it is not until the 30 minute mark that the human scent is the more prominent one. (1b).

On hard surfaces and sandy soil without vegetation, this is obviously not a factor, but as we traditionally start our dogs on easy short grass surfaces, why not wait for at least 30 minutes before putting the pup on the track?

Most certainly the information contained in this chart can make you think about your dogs behaviour on the track - with varying age and ground and weather conditions. It also makes you wonder which scent picture will my puppy associate with the treats on the ground? This is brought up in Joanne Plumb's video on Tracking (6) . Using her scent box exercise she teaches the beginner dog that scent picture in the trampled down area = food; whereas the scent outside the scent box does not yield any food rewards. Of course her method starts on sandy soil and does not have to deal with the whole issue of vegetation and its impact on the scent picture.

According to White both scent components are used by the dog - the human scent to discriminate - and the ground disturbance for stability. The human scent sticks to the area I walked through, where ever it adheres best and whereever the wind and surface conditions allow it to 'flow' to. The ground vegetative component will vary with the type of vegetation, and weather conditions. Walking thru a track from the short grass area on a small hill, which may be dry and very flat even ground, thru a mixed vegetation area with moist soil and very uneven ground, you are indeed changing the scent picture for your dog in just one track.

I know that throughout this tracking season I will be adding these variables much more dilligently to my tracking log and keeping my copy of Syrotuck handy to read over!

The beginning of the chain .. Search for the starting point

At the TD level, starts are uncomplicated - there's a second flag 30 meters out on the first leg; so all you need to do is bring your dog up to the scent pad just in front of starting flag and give the cue to search. Without thinking we often line up our shoulders with the direction of the track - and in TDX and the urban tracks, there is no second flag - so you want to make sure your dog has learned to ignore your body language and can independently search for the scent pad and then the direction of the first leg.

You want to make sure to  practice approaches from different angles to the start flag. Train yourself to NOT trample all over the scent pad, and stay off the track in case you need to restart your dog.

According to the CKC rulebook the scent pad is 1 square meter - the track layer is required to stand at the start for 1 minute. Take a look at Steve Whites info from Syrotuck . The scent that is prevalent at this point is the human scent. ( TD start time 30 mins to 2 hours).

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Notes and References for the Tracking Page

** . In the first level TD tracking trial this is pretty simple, as you have a second flag about 30 meters out, which tells you the direction of the first leg; at the TDX level, there is only the starting flag. The TD track has one article at the end of the track; while the TDX level has 3 articles, 2 on the track and one at the end of the last leg.

(1) Steve White TRACKING DVD TAWZER DOG VIDEOS 2005 A Seminar held in Sacramento, California. You can find my review here and Steve Whites Page here; there are a number of free downloads on his page, which contain the information on aging tracks and which scent component is prevalent. (1b) You can find the chart in this article which also details information about his tracking method for variable surface tracking.

(2) William 'Sil' Sanders ENTHUSIASTIC TRACKING - A STEP BY STEP TRAINING HANDBOOK 1998

(3) Ed Presnall MASTERING VARIABLE SURFACE TRACKING BOOK AND WORKBOOK 2004

(4) William Syrotuck SCENT AND THE SCENTING DOG 2000

(5) Carolyn Krause TRY TRACKING! - THE PUPPY TRACKING PRIMER 2005

(6) Joanne Plumb on the Foundations of Competitive Tracking DVD