Aaron i am clueless about shutzhund tracking having only ever seen 1 tape, but you kind of verified my opinion that by stating its will tell you more about a "dogs temperament", so that makes it a temperament test?? not an outright tracking test.
consider this scenario; the thing your tracking is moving at speed, the goal is to catch it, the things moves in a huge circle around you, whats a good shutzhund dog going to do, plant its nose on the track like its a connected to a set of rails and faithfully follow the track in the same circle, even if the thing ended up 2 feet from where you were intially standing, Sch tracking is all on-leash as far as i have seen so the dog is limited to the speed of the handler for a start. hope you agree so far.

what would a hunting dog do; it would use whatever means possible including footstep tracking, air-scenting, ground scenting, sighting to get the shortest and quickest path to the moving thing you are trying to find. which will most likely involve going completely off the entire track and cutting across the circle, quartering whatever.

dogs have survived that way for millions of years before competition tracking started, if they didn't they would have starved to death and not bred a next generation.
of course if your goal is to find dropped evidence then this method would be useless. can't see why we would argue about 2 compelety different tasks that are not related.
in a hunting scenario the handler does not even have sight of the dog for possibly hours at a time, who knows or cares what method the dog is using if it comes up with the goods. most hunters use tracking collars because they have no idea where the dog is most of the time, the old timers bred dogs to bark loudly when the dog cornered the thing for the same reason.
if you found a dog that could do all that better than the other dogs and someone found the same thing with their dogs they would be bred together to increase the likelyhood that the pups would be better than both the parents, if not the pups would most likely be shot before they matured.

the best way clearly to do schutzhund tracking i'm guessing is by doing schutzhund tracking, no more or no less.

Actually, there's no requirement that Schutzhund tracking be on leash.
I've seen people trial off-leash. The rules state, however, the the handler must be a specific distance from the dog throughout the track, so the leash ensures that.

Interestingly, if you read von Stephanitz's book, you'll find that GSDs naturally utilized foot-step tracking from the beginnings of the breed. Air-scenting, in his approximation, is not natural to the GSD.

There are tracking titles in Schutzhund that do not utilize foot-step tracking at all, but rather whatever method the dog elects to use naturally, provided he finds what he has been sent to find.

Fantastic video of Wallace Payne's dog tracking off-leash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV7retd4WQU

apples and oranges, Sch training was more inline with Police/Military use. Man Tracking and SAR. you don't understand the breed, GSDs and others of there type were ment to be all purpose dogs ie herding, guide dogs for the blind, service dogs, SAR, PPD and damn fine companions. compairing hounds and Bully types to Shepherds is silly.

And as a final note...

Anyone who involves their dog in only one venue, is seriously shortchanging their dog, if its a working dog.

A German Shepherd can, and should, be involved in as many different avenues of training as possible given basic geographical and financial constraints.

It is my firm belief, and the basis for my love of the breed, that German Shepherd can do ANYTHING.
If a dog can do it, a German Shepherd can.

Edited by Aaron Myracle (07/23/2010 08:04 PM)
Edit reason: Dennis and I posted at the same time.

 Quote: Aaron Myracle

Fantastic video of Wallace Payne's dog tracking off-leash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV7retd4WQU

Deep sigh. If I'm ever lost, feel free to send that bad boy dog and his handler after me any day. (I know, I know, I don't know what I'm talking about, but that was a great video.)

sweet video & dog, the distractions were high near all that passing traffic and i notice a fairly high wind coming from the treeline side, the dog had to change directions in all that wind it was awesome.

how do all these discussions end up being a breed discussion, i really enjoyed seeing an awesome dog doing an excellent job under distraction. all i give crap about is training and training methods.

Well let's start another thread.
Say, talk about different tracking and how/why each is used.

Just as an example understand.

can always migrate over and check out the tracking forum for that i guess. the folks into tracking seem a mixed bunch. not sure what the common link is that draws people to that particular dog speciality.