Both my dogs seem to ground scent track fine in grass, dirt, and gravel but they both want to overshoot the turns on pavement. Should I be giving some direction when I see them having trouble on the turn or just allow them to figure it out themselves?

I am no expert by *any stretch of the imagination* on tracking. Just today though, I was reading the Leerburg catalog (and placing orders!! There are several videos Ed sells specifically addressing tracking. From what I've read, it is essential to train country tracking first due to the extreme distraction of urban areas. Where specifically are you training tracking and how old are your dogs?

Edited by Michele McAtee (03/15/2007 05:38 PM)
Edit reason: dog (s) plural.

My dogs are 2 and a half. We started in grass quite a while ago in a place with very little distraction and progressed to places where there were more things going on. Since I am just starting on hard surface tracking with them I thought it best to start again with no distraction.

How are you doing your turns? rounded, sharp, what?
I just recently added cement or walkways into my tracking path.What I have done is ended my track on the cement path so that I introduced my dog into going onto the cement, and I have gone from a few inches(with food) onto the cement and gone further and further.You kinda want to introduce that path way slowly but positively.Gosh It's hrd to explain in writing
Ok here is an example with my young male, i start the track in th egrass, we track for about 100 pace,I end the track right at the cement(w/food) then we track again but the next track we end it on the cement a little further(food is at the end) and we go further and further onto the cement.With my older male he'll track on cement, crosses it with no problem and that is how I introduced it.Does that make sense, Pm me if you want I'll be happy to go over it with you again .I love to track and I track 5 days a week..My older male could be an FH dog if I wanted ,the only problem I have with him right now are the articles, but he'll track for miles with out a miss but he'll blow his articles at times

Michael, I don't want to take your thread off topic so if this question takes you in an intended direction I will begin a new one.

Question is: at what point do know the dog is ready to have hard surfaces introduced; and how do you scent that portion of the track?

I know when the dog is ready by his or her ability to focus and be intense on grass. After that I go to dirt then gravel and then hard surface. I use hot dog slices at an interval of 5-15 and then an article at 20 steps.

I like the way you introduce the hard surface slowly. Since they alrady have been doing sharp turns for quite awhile I just continued with them. I was tracking every day but when I hit gravel I slowed it down to about 2-3 times a week. I found that my dogs were starting to get a little bored.

What's an article? Sharp turn? Any url with all the tracking lingo? I will be doing this for fun with my hound soon.

All kinds Richard jsut do a google search for tracking articles.

Thanks Michael. I have fairly good intensity but now I am working at reducing the amount of scent on the track (i.e. not kicking in my prints so much and keeping drive up by increasing the number of food drops). So, should I be at a point where the dog can follow a track of X length, with X number of food drops, with X much odor in the foot prints? And that brings me to ... what is X?

And what do you use to scent a hard surface track? I've been with some LE officers that scuffed their boots along, and I've read about diluting sweat in a squirt bottle... I just don't know where to start with this or if I am 'there' yet with my dog. Oh ya, and how does the training differentiate between a true hard surface and a partial hard surface like a gravel road?