Tracking dogs: Mantrailing and Tracking dogs training simply explained

By Roland Berger

Tracking - or Mantrailing in a slightly different form - is a useful activity for your dog. Actually, you do not have to teach him much here, because your dog can sniff quite certainly ... and he also does day after day with every walk.

So why do you need to train your dog in tracking? Well... tracking work is a bit more profound. You yourself or another person lay a track for your dog to follow. But of course not somehow, because there are rules for this. You can even take certain exams to be able to lead your dog as a recognized tracking or rescue dog.

For mantrailing, similar rules apply, but here no artificially laid track is followed by your four-legged friend, but the dog is trained so that he can follow the scent of a very specific person and thus, for example, find a missing person.

The contents of the book are:
- The tracking work
- The tracking training
- Difficulties in nature
- Mantrailing and ID tracking
- The trail
- The examination to the recognized tracking dog
- Learning tips
- Conclusion

Can your dog do it? Most definitely... there are very few exceptions where this sport should be avoided. These will be explained to you in this guide. In addition, you will learn how to train your tracking dog to be a tracking dog and what you need to do it. You will get all the background information you need to take your fdog on the trail.

Enjoy reading, learning and training.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9783986468996

Book preview

Introductory

D

he most popular pet of man has a very special ability: it can smell particularly well and is also very teachable to be sensitized to different smells. Thus, a dog is able to locate certain materials and substances. Even under the most difficult conditions, a dog can sniff out certain objects, such as cash or drugs.

But what is meant by tracking work and what characterizes it? Can every dog breed become a tracking specialist or is this only reserved for special breeds? Whether your dog counts and how you can train him for the search work, you will learn in this guide.

The track work

D

he sense of smell of a dog is far superior to that of humans. A dog's nose can have up to 200 million olfactory cells, compared to only about five million in humans.

Surely you have observed your pet on walks sniffing extensively in the grass or on the trees. In these moments he can read which dog has been here last. Maybe it is a nice dog lady, who is just looking for a suitable companion... or maybe a strange male dog has settled down, who can offer competition to your four-legged friend. All this information is in the scent marks of other dogs and these are very important for your quadruped. For him it is the morning paper.

Now, however, the natural sense of smell of a dog can be refined and specialized much further. Especially to be able to offer the animal a species-appropriate occupation, this is advantageous. Sniffing itself is inherent in every dog and he does it because it is genetically anchored in him. You can use this as an employment basis and thus offer him a lot more than just the routine walk and the subsequent game of fetching sticks.

Learn now what is meant by this tracking work and how it came to train dogs to sniff out certain substances in the first place.

Tracking work - what is it?

Since the domestication of dogs, they have been used for all sorts of tasks. That is how they were bred at that time. Some breeds had a very good protective instinct and were bred as herding and guard dogs, while other breeds had a pronounced hunting instinct and were used accordingly as hunting dogs. Still other breeds could follow the scent of a potential prey animal particularly well. Thus, these dogs were then used as search dogs. All these naturally existing instincts were selected and only the best animals were used for further breeding to improve and refine the intended ambitions. Tracking or search dogs have existed for as long as man has made use of the dog's characteristics.

However, the actual term rescue dog is not so old and originated during the Second World War in England. Here, an elderly woman had her small dog search for injured and buried people in the rubble of bombed houses. After the success of this little rescuer became known, more dogs were used to find missing people. Here, too, there was great success and some of these four-legged friends received the Dikkin Medal of the Victoria Cross for Animals. However, the little dog of the old woman can be considered the ancestor of all rescue dogs of today.

The detection dogs in use today can be of very different breeds. It does not necessarily have to be a pedigree dog that can be trained to be a good tracking, tracking or rescue dog. What is important is a clean character, a well-developed play instinct (for the dog it is all just a game) and of course an excellent sense of smell. 

Mostly the tracking work with the dog is pursued sportily. But the dog's nose is also used with great success in many professions. For example, in the police or customs as well as in rescue work. For this, however, your four-legged friend must pass some tests, but you will learn more about this later.

However, there are many more areas that can be covered by sniffer or tracking dogs. For example, there is a tracking dog for data carriers. This is able to detect USB sticks, memory cards and other electronic data carriers. The fact that the chemical triphenylphosphane oxide is present in all storage devices makes this possible. Such a dog trained on this substance can locate and indicate it even in a full garbage can. In full expectation, the dog now wants to receive its reward.

The sniffer dogs at customs work in a similar way. They, too, are trained to detect certain scents of cigarettes, narcotics or cash. If a customs dog finds one of these illegal substances, it indicates it to its handler by setting down at the spot where it sniffed out the item. He will look at his handler wagging his tail, because now he is sure of his reward, namely his favorite toy. As a reminder, for the dog this search is a game. If he succeeds in the search, he gets his toy.

The numerous rescue dogs are used as area search dogs. They sniff out exclusively human scents, which cannot be assigned to a specific person. Here especially the avalanche search dogs, the rubble search dogs or the water dogs find a mention. These four-legged dogs can still detect human scents even in a very inaccessible terrain and usually indicate their find by barking. Often, they also lead the handler to the person found, so that the rescue of the injured person can be started quickly. An avalanche search dog can still find a person under a meter-high snow cover and then starts digging for the buried person at this spot.

A water dog is able to detect the scent of a body in the tides. Of course, a water search dog will not swim through the sea to locate missing persons. With his handler he stays on a boat. If the dog indicates by barking that it has detected a scent, other personnel check the current and wind direction and alert the rescue divers, who continue the search. Since diving operations are limited, such a water search dog is used in advance so that such a large area as the sea or a large lake can be searched in a meaningful way. What odor a water search dog smells has not been scientifically proven. It should not be decomposition odors, because these dogs also find corpses with a very short lying time, from which no decomposition odor can emanate. Also lost skin particles are omitted, because otherwise the dog would strike much more often, if still other bathers were in this water. So in the case of a lifeless person, there must be a certain smell that the dog perceives. The ability of these fur noses to locate a dead person at depths of up to 40 meters is astonishing.

In mantrailing, the dog is fixated on finding a specific person. For example, if a child goes missing in a forest, the search dog is given a scent sample of the person it is supposed to locate. This can be, for example, a sock or a handkerchief, but also a recently worn piece of clothing can provide a good clue for the fine dog nose. The search is started where the missing person is known to have stayed last. For the dog such an employment means largest concentration and effort, because it must fixate exclusively on this smell and follow this trace. An appropriate reward should of course be given when the search is finished.

Specially trained dogs can even sniff out pests on the trees of our forests. This sniffer dog is also given a scent sample and then the quadruped searches for either certain mushrooms or vermin, such as various species of wood ticks. In the case of a positive find, the dog barks or lays down in the appropriate place to indicate the position to the handler.

Likewise, sniffer dogs can also be useful for research. For example, a so-called species sniffer dog can locate endangered animal or plant species. Thus, it can be determined whether this particular species still exists in the fauna and flora and how high the number is. Not all breeds of dogs are suitable for such tracking work. Pointing dogs such as the pointer or the setter are well suited for it because they have a strong instinct to detect other animal species and indicate them to the handler without