how do you do it?? which kind do you do? how did you start your dog? and where are you now??? where to you want to be?

I prefer AKC. Schutzhund is too stylized for me.

That said, I do train footspep tracking initially but as the dog gains experience I allow casting at turns. I think this teaches the dog to think aout a scenting problem. It would be many points off in SchH.

Alwasy wanted a VST and CT. Kayos was my dog for that but her bad hips affected her stamina and I decided not to push her. She has her TDX.

Havoc is a committed air scenter despite training him to SchH track. Every time I try to certify him he cuts corners too badly and we do not pass. He does get the glove as he knows right where it is.

I have strted Mayhem adn we have played around but I have kind of burned out from tracking so we don't go out much. Having too much fun with herding and agility instead.

just starting! Schutzhund. We were moving from scent pads to tracks before the snow hit....and stayed...so can't wait till spring. Mister has a nose on him. I really enjoy tracking so hoping to go to higher levels with him.

Started with Jax. She's ADD. Search, Search, Search...BIRD!

I am going nuts not being able to track(IPO) right now....we have 3' of snow on the ground with no thaw in the future. I like tracking better than Karlo does, he'd prefer to man track. I'm going for the IPO 2&3 this summer so will hopefully get his enthusiasm dialed in.
Onyx is going to start tracking this spring, she has a natural talent/though we'll never trial due to her temperament. It'll be just for fun with her.
Scent pads to start, then 3 short tracks after that is how I've introduced it. Articles are taught off the track and on hard surface.
I'd like to learn AKC style, I think it is more fun for the dog and not so precision/obedience based as the IPO style.

SchH tracking though a bit looser than needed for super high scores most of the time.

I start with boxes, then go to double laid trench tracks, add in corners, then single trench, then foot steps. Usually fairly heavily laid with food at first. Every time I move away from this routine I don't care for the results.

Jane, if you can do SchH tracking you can do a TD as long as your dog has been aloud to make mistakes and learn from its mistakes.

I do schH tracking.

right now fritz has his TR1... cuvee' is just now up to almost a scHH1 track step amount wise, and I just added articles to the track at the end.

i have gotten here with fritz two ways...

way #1. stomp out steps, throwing food as I go, throw down articles willy nilly.... get the dog. hype im up so he drags me to the flag. walk up and say suche... when he doesn't do it yell suche again. stick his nose into the step and yell suche again... when he gets to the article... scream down and give a correction if he doesn't do it. then when he is done throw a ball for him... keep in mind.... my dog was not food OR toy motivated at the time. my dog learned to HATE tracking. he hurried through the track (which by then had no food anymore) and seldom cared that much about downing on article (he only liked when I threw the ball because that meant we were done)...poor fritz.

way #2. when I met my current trainers, I found out that what I had taught my dog (besides to hate tracking) was that "tracking" meant - follow the scent as fast as you can... and if you happened to smell the article before you passed it - down on it. so, we started over. totally and completely from scratch. they started with teaching me the importance of setting the track (starting with correct scent pad staging - depending on the dog you might not put treats everywhere... you may find you put them only at the "front" or "the sides" depends on if your dog inhales food or tries to skip the pad altogether), keeping your food in a particular spot on your footstep (I put it in the "ball of the foot " area - in this way the dog will -over time learn to get to the step and sniff "up" the step for the treat) . to be meticulous with how you set your track (if you drop some food pick it up, if the area sucks -start your track laying again) and lastly what to do when things go wrong on the track.

we did start with normal steps, they were all baited. as was the scent pad. we worked on getting him CALMLY to the flag. this in itself took weeks... then I made him wait at the pad and eat some of the food (at this point i have a food he likes and does make a little bit of effort to eat it.) ... when he does, I let him to the first step. I hold the leash as to not let him continue until he eats the food and swings his head to the next step... I do this to slow his speed. this took a very long time to get him to realize what I want him to do is to go to each and every step on the track NOT run over steps and assume the track is straight out in front of him (and in fact i never lay my track completely straight always some kind of
"drunk like" steps. although it may seem I am teaching my dog to eat food out of the footsteps instead of actually sniffing into them - BUT- when they have gotten used to sniffing each footstep for food and you start to eliminate the bait (I varied my elimination.... bait 10 steps don't bait 2 then bait 5 no bait on 4 etc - he shouldn't be able to guess when it is there and when it is not there )- HE WILL StART USING HIS NOSE TO SNIFF UP EVERY STEP TO CHECK FOR FOOD!! and now I have been able to 1. get the dog to sniff every step 2. got him to slow down. in getting him to slow down he now sniffs every step and will not miss an article. he also will not miss a turn - because he sniffs every step!! this took about 6 months to retrain my initial crappy tracking training mistakes. AND, by doing all of this without corrections of any kind, my dog has decided he LOVES to track!! so now, we walk up to the scent pad very calm. I tell the dog to suche, he goes to the scent pad, does the obligatory sniff around that, then to the track... i tell him good if he is sniffing each step and eating the food, if he gets lost or is distracted by something on the track i say nothing.. when he figures it out i say good. the only time i say NO is if (and this doesn't happen very often if i have set my track correctly and set the dog up to succeed by not setting my track somewhere were he is distracted ) he stops to look at something not having to do with the track. and that is the correction... NO! and when he goes back to the track i say good....

articles. i retrained that too. i did it off the track . this didn't take very long at all. taking the article asking him to "find it" while i hold it in front of his face. when he looks that way i use my reward markier word "yes" and treat with a high value treat. eventually i place in farther and farther away doing the same rewarding. this took one day for him to LOVE articles. i was told to get some old film canisters to load high value treats in for the articles. in other words what i use on the track in the prints is not what use to reward the indication... that is super high value. raw bacon, left over steak, salmon... whatever i have left over... he indicates, i walk up and pick up the article and leave the canister. i let him take as long as he wants to eat what is in it. then we continue... this has worked amazingly well.

cuvee was officially started in way #2. his problem was too fast on the track. i tracked him a few times ffor fun when he was a pup (no compulsion at all) by just stomping out a track and putting a toy buried at the end. this caused this dog to run to the end to get the toy. again teaching him that speed is what was wanted NOT accuracy... so when i started training i had to convince cuvee that he had to sniff each step, etc etc... i started with the "trench" stepage, but soon realized steps far apart would work better for him - the defined start and stop of a step made him think more then the trench steps. . he soon got the whole, sniff "uP" the step for the treat! right now he has gotten the slow and steady down but he is much more distractible in his tracking. i find he will look around far more than fritz ever did. so i do say NO a bit more with him as i don't want him to think he is allowed to do this.

articles were taught off the track. last week was the first time i put them onto the track. one at the end. he did not down fast and might not have.. so i gave him the command to down... when he did i said "show me" he looked at it i did the film canaster reward .... the next time he downed faster and the next time i tracked i probably didn't even need to say it but did anyway.

i would like to continue tracking fritz to a tr2 and 3 maybe even FH... and cuvee will be doing IPO 1 later this year... and continue with 2 and 3.

I like this thread. It's good for me to read every one else techniques and experiences.

Up until this fall I was focusing mostly on socialization and ob for the BH, tracking only a few times during the summer. I also stayed away from it because it used a lot of food and I didn't want to mess her stomach up due to her EPI. I knew I needed to take the time to sit down and come up with a solution before tracking her. I found a solution and then it snowed... a lot. So I am waiting for spring.

What we have done in the past: Schutzhund tracking. Start with a scent pad right before laying the 'trench' style heavy foot steps, and then a scent pad and jackpot at the end. Food in every step. Basia tracks insanely fast and blows through many footsteps. When I got more serious in the fall, I switched to regular footsteps because I think it helped slow her down a bit. Still food in every step but I try with all my might to not allow her to go forward until she gets the food from each step. It was so difficult and my arms were so sore! We walk up calmly and I have her sit before the scent pad before I tell her to cherche. At the end, I have her lay down on the scent pad. I also couldn't lay a straight line if I tried, so they are drunk lines with s turns and right angles.

And that's where we are stuck. Me trying to slow her down. Once the snow melts I am hoping that if she tracks for her meals, and if I hold her back on each step, that she'll eventually 'get it'. I'm thinking that if she misses a step, she doesn't get the food... she'll be hungrier during the next track and maybe pay more attention and slow it down.

Articles: off track, hard surface. Click/treat when she acknowledged it's presence, eventually working up to click/treat for downing at it.

ETA: Someone told me that I should put her on a prong and pop her at each step to slow her down. She's not a soft dog so I don't think it would hurt her enthusiasm... buuuut I'm still not sure about that method. Anyone have thoughts on this???

I would not do this yet... you should be able to get your dog to understand to go to each footstep slow and methodically. you will have to be consistent and perhaps you will have to have food on the track for many many tracks and YOU MAY want to put 2 treats in a step (heel and toe) to slow her down... .. once your dog Knows what to do and still is super fast and doesn't respond to the "checking" of the line and you are positive that your dog will not equate the prong corrections with disliking tracking - then you could move onto the prong corrections...bt I would make that a last resort.... and try all other methods first.

btw.. when you hold her back (before she doges to the next step... do you also "check" the line?? you know... give a "correctional pop"? or just hold her back until she goes to the next step??

Remove the jackpot from the end of the track which is encouraging her to rush. Just have food in the foot steps and maybe one extra piece with praise at the end. Use something pretty smelly for bait and make sure it is deep into the steps. As the dog progresses you can go to thing that are not as smelly. Sometimes bringing the dog to the track hungry works. Some dogs it will make the tracking more hectic.

I track on a fursaver, puppies on a flat collar. I have double lined one dog (one line on the fursaver, one on a pinch with that line only being used for corrections for speed so otherwise loose) and that was because my normal style of setting the pace didn't work for him due to his size.

wow... I forgot about putting the bait deep within the steps... and I still DO that!! I have a "stick" that I use.. a guy we track with had one and we all copied it - mostly because we all hated baiting 300+ steps bending over . it is a 3 ft pvc pipe big enough to drop treats through (your height determines how high you may want the pipe to be and the diameter is good at about 1 inch so food doesn't get wedged it in on the way down into the footstep). I then added onto the pvc pipe, with duct tape, a large screw head that is a 1/2 in diameter that sticks out past the pvc by 1 inch - so the screw is quite long llike about 4 inches or so... I stab this in to the dirt- raise it and then drop the food into the hole by dropping the food through the pvc ... this addition made it great to put into the footstep really deep, which does make the dog slow down even more because he has to work a little harder to get and eat the food. we don't even mind if the dog takes his foot to try to get the food. that is al ok, that is all slowing the dogs down... and of course at trail there is no food to dig for so that will not be a problem.

The screw is a cool idea. Have the PVC pipe.

I train police K-9s. We start in a wooded area, in the beginning we want little to no distractions. A quick agitation from the quarry wearing a sleeve and then he runs into the brush about 100 feet and lies down out of sight. We wait 2 minutes bring the dog up touch the ground and let him go. Upon locating the quarry, he receives a quick bite on the sleeve. we repeat this quite a few times the first few days.

Next we will introduce short tracks without the quarry being seen by the dog. The tracks are now 10 minutes old with a 45 degree turn prior to biting the quarry. We continue making the tracks a little longer utilizing the 10 minute delay. By now the K-9 is searching hard and we keep the length the same but add a little more time before the start.

As the majority of our tracks are 10 to 15 minutes old and 3 to 4 blocks in length we will normally use that time frame for most of our tracks. On occasion however I allow the tracks to set for 1/2 hour.

Next we bring the dogs into the neighborhood and begin our tracking on quiet streets again with as little disturbance as possible. We will track through yards, driveways, playgrounds getting them use to this type environment for at least another week or so.

Next we start hard surface tracking, I will not go into how I teach it here as it would take a looong time to explain.

Once the dogs have gotten an idea on working hard surface we go into town where they will begin real world tracking, also we will begin doing all tracking at night. Here they will become adjusted to the numerous distractions such as animals, odors, cross tracks. handlers will know the tracks at first and once we see the handler is confident in himself and his dog we will begin unknown tracks.

Since this tracking is such a strain on the dogs every Friday during the course we will go back to the woods and do all grass tracks.

Lastly once I am satisfied they are doing well we will begin off the lead tracking. It is my preferred method for the rest of the course this will be the method utilized except on Friday day when we go back to the woods. The handler must be in good shape to do this style of tracking. Once completed the rest of the K-9 course is running 1 to 2 tracks a night.

Precisely why I hate tracking! I'm totally going to steal this idea now too
Although pvc pipes are pretty smelly so I wonder if the dog would key into that smell over the actual foot-step smell?




Nope, no pop. Just me steadily pulling back with all my might. I've switched between using a harness and using a flat collar or fursaver with the line running under her belly, admittedly a bit inconsistently because I'm not sure which one I like better.



Thanks, I will definitely remove the jackpot at the end. In the past, I have noticed that tracking on an empty stomach makes her more frantic so I would feed her breakfast first. HOWEVER my "fix" for her EPI issue is to pre-incubate kibble, and mash it all up until it's the consistency of cake frosting, scoop it into a big ziplock bag and cut a corner out of the bottom and squeeze it out into each foot-step (it's really gross and looks like ) . So, I don't have an option as to what kind of food to use, and she now will *have* to track for meals unless I want her to get fat.

We shall see. I'm still waiting for the snow to go away. I definitely plan to track a lot this summer... and consistently. Once we start up again I'll try these new things and report back... probably for more advice

HA! Before I got to that sentence I was like "Oooo I wonder if he's going to explain tracking on hard surfaces!!"

Sounds like a lot of work!

I use US Army scout dog techniques FM1974(I think) Almost all my work with the dogs are based on this manual