May 20, 2011
In Level 1 tracking, my dog misses the track by 30-40 feet. What can I do to narrow this?
Full Question:
Hi Ed,My GSD starts "air scenting" when I get into the woods. How do I keep his nose down? We first started in a large field, wind at our back, tracks are about 1500ft. 3/4 of the track is nose down in the grass about 6 to 8 inches high (very good). Once we get to where the person was hiding (Woods), he misses the track by at least 30ft-40ft... I can locate the person (which is my intention) but I know he misses the track since the person indicates where they entered... What should I do to narrow that distance off track? I wouldn't want to go completely off track on an actual call-out. Could it be that the human scent is to high at this point? Should we be aging the track more? The intention of my training is for S&R. Dog is 1 yr old. Working towards achieving level 1 certification with the RCMP.
We are using techniques from your level 1 video.
Thanks.
Marc
Ed's Answer:
Difficult for me to diagnose a problem from such a short email.
With that said you are pushing the envelope on age for this kind of work. I can tell you I would not be doing this kind of tracking on such a young dog. This very well could be your problem.
In addition – your goal is to find the person and not the track. If the dog enters the woods and find the person that this is OK. With that said it sounds to me like this is a handler error in how you are setting up your training tracks – again it sounds like you are skipping training steps.
If you don’t have the training DVDs that I did on this style of tracking, you might want to look into them.
Training S&R - Police Tracking Dogs (Tracking Through Drive) Level 1 - Country Tracking
Track Laying for Police Tracking Dogs
Training S&R -Police Tracking Dogs (Tracking Though Drive) Level 2 & 3 - City Tracking
Hard Surface Tracking - It’s Not Impossible
Problem Solving in Tracking
Kind Regards,
Ed Frawley
With that said you are pushing the envelope on age for this kind of work. I can tell you I would not be doing this kind of tracking on such a young dog. This very well could be your problem.
In addition – your goal is to find the person and not the track. If the dog enters the woods and find the person that this is OK. With that said it sounds to me like this is a handler error in how you are setting up your training tracks – again it sounds like you are skipping training steps.
If you don’t have the training DVDs that I did on this style of tracking, you might want to look into them.
Training S&R - Police Tracking Dogs (Tracking Through Drive) Level 1 - Country Tracking
Track Laying for Police Tracking Dogs
Training S&R -Police Tracking Dogs (Tracking Though Drive) Level 2 & 3 - City Tracking
Hard Surface Tracking - It’s Not Impossible
Problem Solving in Tracking
Kind Regards,
Ed Frawley
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