Tracking: For Companion and Sports Dogs

By Sonja Needs

Tracking is a great way to channel your dogs energy and challenge their mind.

There are different avenues of tracking from sports trials (earning titles), to search and rescue (professional working dogs), to dogs who only participate for fun and energy release.

Tracking as a dog sport is intended to exercise the mind and body of your dog. Tracking is an ideal activity for dogs which have high drive (motivation and energy for a task) and require a means for release. Any breed of dog can do tracking and many dogs will excel at tracking where they have failed at other dog sports.

Tracking challenges your dog with a task, they utilize their innate physical and mental abilities to the fullest extent, as nature had intended.

In this book, we focus on Tracking as a sport or for fun. We use techniques and methods used by professional tracking and trailing dog handlers. We cover everything from laying your first track, progressing your training and troubleshooting.

Learn about scent, how it moves and how it is affected by the environment so that you can start to understand your dogs behaviour and support them. Understanding scent also makes it easier for you to make well planned practice tracks for you and your training partners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514496091

Sonja Needs

Sonja has been training dogs for over twenty-five years, gaining competition titles with her rough collies, which she bred, in obedience and tracking. She has extensive experience with dog behavioural training. She currently lectures in Animal Science (behaviour and training) and researches canine scenting and detection for pest and diseases at the University of Melbourne, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Science. She has extensive knowledge on scent and how it is affected by environmental and atmospheric conditions and holds a number of degrees, including a BS in app. sc., a grad. cert. in forensic sci., a grad. dip. in teaching, and is currently completing her research masters. Sonja was an Australian certified and operational search-and-rescue dog handler with her German Shepherd Dog Luther, specialising in urban search and rescue. She currently has a feisty Border Terrier called Keely, who has shown great talent in trailing.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Sonja Needs.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016907694

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-9592-6

                Softcover        978-1-5144-9591-9

                eBook             978-1-5144-9609-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover photos courtesy of Elaine Collier and Craig Drowley

Talia Duell with Henry (top) and Rupert (center)

Illustrations by Eden Jane Tongson

Rev. date: 05/17/2016

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

728440

CONTENTS

A FEW FACTS

Chapter 1: TRACKING FOR SPORT AND FUN

Trial basics

Tracking versus trailing

Can a sport tracking dog be used as a search and rescue dog?

Chapter 2: HOW DO DOGS WORK?

A Dogs Sense-Ability

Sight

Hearing

Smell (olfaction)

What scent is a dog tracking?

Everyone smells differently, some more than others

Understanding the language of tracking: Reading your dog

Body language to look for

Chapter 3: REWARDS AND MOTIVATION

Rewards

Motivation

What is the different between reward and motivation?

Understanding instinctive behaviours

Food or toys?

Preference testing your dog

Motivating your dog with food

Using toys as reward

Chapter 4: BEFORE YOU START

Commands

Practice lead handling

Elements of a track

Start routine

Harness

Lead

Backpack or pouch

Developing your start routine

Tracklayers

Flags or markers

Tarps and end of track hiding places

Articles

Corners

Crosstracks

Length of track

Aging the track

Distractions

Variable surfaces

Practice environments

Chapter 5: TWO METHODS FOR BEGINNING TRACKING

Getting your dogs nose down

Tracking Through Drive vs Foot Step Tracking

Tracking Through Drive; Runaways

A few tips for runaways

Foot Print Tracking; Laying the first track

A few tips for a first track

Chapter 6: PROGRESSING THE TRACK

Know how dogs work a track

Commitment to Human Scent

Scent pools

Blind starts

Keeping the Dog on Track

Debriefing

Using smart phone/tablet applications

Summary for Training and Practice

Myths and Wives Tales

Chapter 7: TROUBLE SHOOTING

Losing the track or failing to finish

Corners

Cross Tracks

Wildlife, Livestock, Cats and other Dogs

Scent Articles

Settling into a track

Fear of tracklayer, tarps or end of track

Distractions and displacement

Distraction

Displacing

Building Confidence with Blind Problems

Training on your own

Chapter 8: SCENT AND ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS

Scent Movement Summary

Atmospheric conditions will affect the way a dog works

Warm Air rises and Cool Air sinks

Wind movement and airflow

Air movement in the human wake

Air movement around obstacles

Secondary barriers

Direction of track and aging scent

Scent cones and scent movement

Odour forms a scent pool (diffusion)

Wind carries scent away forming a scent cone

Scent cone distortion is produced by variable winds

Secondary scent pools and secondary scent cones

Scent flows downhill, forming secondary scent pool at the base of the hill

Eddying scent

Thermal plumes

Human thermal plume

Fanning plumes

Fumigating scent plumes

Lofting scent plumes

Looping plumes

Scent travels down cold surfaces and up warm surfaces

Sources of thermal uplift in urban environments

Abrupt air temperature changes

Scent movement in an urban environment

Chapter 9: CHECKING THE AIR

Chapter 10: THE FINAL WORD

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thank you to the following people for their contributions and support:

Emma Smyth for her encouragement to write this book. Eden Jane Tongson for her fantastic illustrations, turning my scribbles and photos into something worth looking at. Dr. Diana Rayment for her editing skill and advice. Talia Duell for the pictures of her dogs. All the people who have told me stories of their adventures and exploits in tracking, many of which I have used in anecdotes and examples in my work.

I would also like to thank the dogs, past and present, who I have worked with, all of who have trained me as much as I trained them.

For my beloved Luther, a soul mate that completely changed my life.

Luther was an operational Search and Rescue Dog (Urban), a teacher (he was literally involved with teaching hundreds of Animal and Veterinary Science students) and he was invited to Parliament House to meet the Prime Minister. He was a willing and talented subject in my research and I have published several papers on the work we did together in scent detection.

He leaves big shoes to fill.........

Dog are capable of far more than we give them credit for. They can track scent that is days old, in rain, at night, in windy conditions and still. They can follow scent over just about every surface you can think of, through thick bush, up steep inclines, through snow and moving and still water. It does not matter what the tracklayer is wearing, how fast they walk or whether they have had a shower recently or have not washed for weeks. Humans shed, on average, 40 000 skin cells every minute. These fall and are caught along the track that we walk. A dog requires only a few of these to be able to follow the scent! Dogs track naturally, without us. They do not need to be taught how to use their noses. What we are teaching them is to work with us and to be our guides, to follow a scent specified by us and to tolerate our presence and interference.

A FEW FACTS

A dog's olfactory lobes take up one-eighth of its brain, roughly 40 times larger than ours.

Dogs are one 1,000,000 to 100,000,000 times more sensitive to smells than humans.

A dog can detect a scent that is one part per trillion.

Depending on the conditions, dogs can pick up scent up to 800 meters away (or more)!

The dog is able to discriminate scent for indefinite periods without being subject to the phenomenon of "nose fatigue", which occurs in the human olfactory system. (An example of nose fatigue is when you first put on perfume you can smell it but after a few minutes you can no longer smell it. Dogs don't get nose fatigue so will be able to smell that perfume for days after you have put it on, even after you have washed).

Humans shed, on average, 40 000 skin cells every minute. These fall and are caught along the track that we walk. A dog requires only a few of these to be able to follow the scent!

CHAPTER 1

TRACKING FOR SPORT AND FUN

Tracking training does not have to be complicated.

A TRACKING/TRAILING SEARCH and rescue (SAR) dog is able to track a specific scent with little start scent (perhaps a swab from a car seat or single footprint on the ground) that may be hours old, through suburbia or wilderness or both. This scent may be contaminated with everything from fresh human scent to animals, other dogs and even their own handler. With this in mind, why has the sport tracking world managed to not only underestimate the power of the dog's nose, but to make all exercises related to scent work such a complicated and frustrating issue for many dogs and handlers (Rice & Clothier, 1996).

Dogs know how to track. It is arrogant of us to think that we are teaching our dogs how to use their noses. Their ability is far superior to ours. They use their noses to find food, locate and recognise pack members and interpret the world. Teaching a dog how to track is like a blind man teaching a sighted person how to see. What we are doing is teaching the dog to work with us in order to find a scent specified by us.

With the sport of tracking any breed of dog is able to compete and potentially do well. You do not need a high drive dog or a bloodhound to do tracking as a sport, in fact there are many breeds who would never be considered a working breed and that you may not see in the obedience or agility rings, that do extremely well and are very capable in tracking.

Tracking is a fun and rewarding sport for you and your dog. The principles are simple; a track is laid out by a tracklayer, anything from a few hundred meters to well over a kilometre. The tracklayer drops articles (socks, gloves or other items) on the track for your dog to find and hides at a specified end point. You and your dog will then come to the starting point and follow the track, finding the articles along the way. The ultimate goal is to find the tracklayer hiding at the end of the track. As the handler you won't know where the track is, it is up to the dog to lead you. The tracks laid in a tracking trial are set out as straight lines usually with 90 degree turns. The rules that govern the laying out of tracks for trials (distances, times, number of corners and articles to be found) make them straight forward and easy to practice. Tracks will not be like those in SAR, where a lost person may wander around aimlessly, backtrack or even climb trees, nor do they include deliberate attempts by the tracklayer to deceive the dog, like a criminal might use to elude a police dog.

At a trial the handler will know the length of the track, the amount of turns and the approximate angle of each turn. They will know how many articles are on the track and how long the track has been aged (amount of time between the tracklayer laying the track and the dog tracking them).

Tracking trials are usually run very early in the morning, before the heat of the day so if your dog likes to follow a scent and you like getting up early and getting some healthy exercise, this sport is for you!

Trial basics

Although different organizations in different countries specify somewhat different rules, the basics of a tracking trial remain the same. The objective is for the dog to find the tracklayer and any articles they may have dropped along the track.

Weeks before the trial starts, entries are received and the club then will have a list of tracks needed. (Dogs at different levels have different