Quote: connie sutherland

It was you (not I) who said "The motivational methods I've seen result in a dog that watches a target or the face instead of where it's going."

You are completely right! Even though I know better, I tend to slip between precise language and common usage. It's a very bad habit, and can cause misunderstandings. I'm sorry.

 Quote: Alyssa Myracle

Schutzhund requires the dog to keeps it's nose on the ground, and literally sniff each individual footstep.

Ah. You're training for form rather than function. There's probably a way to do it, but you have a method that works for you and your dog, so there's no point belaboring it.

I'd love another method of teaching Foot Step Tracking.
I use the treat & scent pad method, because it's the only one I've ever seen used for FST.

If there is another way, I'd love it, because my dog and I have all out wars over how fast we are going to track.

 Quote: Denise Skidmore

 Quote: Alyssa Myracle

Schutzhund requires the dog to keeps it's nose on the ground, and literally sniff each individual footstep.

Ah. You're training for form rather than function. There's probably a way to do it, but you have a method that works for you and your dog, so there's no point belaboring it.

SchH FST:

QUOTE:
Let me explain what FST is. This is the style of tracking used in the sport of Schutzhund .... This training is done using food that is dropped along a 400 to 800 yard track. There is usually a ball left at the end of the track that's used as an additional motivator. The dog is expected to track at a slow walk and stay within a couple of feet of the actual footsteps of the track layer. This is a very precise form of tracking but also a very slow method of tracking.END from http://leerburg.com/ttd.htm

This question about the form/function of a sport gets any thread that still exists way off-topic.

This thread is already way off topic. We went from appropriate age to start using a corrective collars to the appropirateness of using them for training at all, to the nitty-gritty details of clicker training, to tracking training and tracking methods.

I don't chat much on this board, being off-topic is allowed as long as we don't get mean and nasty, right?

So you're saying the proponents of the FST believe the form itself has function. I'll believe it although I don't understand it. I'm not knowlegable enough about tracking to comment on it. In bikejor we have some of the same things that don't make sense to beginners.

I train obediece to make my dogs pleasant to live with, safe, and welcome wherever I take them. I train bikejor for conditioning, fun, and burning off excess energy. I've not worked on any titles yet besides CGC. We might do a bikejor race this winter, but I'm being conservative with the puppy's milage, and may not be up to the race length by then.

Perhaps I should learn about tracking training before I have kids. Ya never know when a child is going to not make it home on deadline and need tracking down. I'm all for learning skills with practical applications.

 Quote: Alyssa Myracle

I'd love another method of teaching Foot Step Tracking.
I use the treat & scent pad method, because it's the only one I've ever seen used for FST.

If there is another way, I'd love it, because my dog and I have all out wars over how fast we are going to track.

Once again, I know nothing about tracking, so forgive my ignorance. I stink at clicker training, but if you're good at it you should be able to shape a nose-down behavior during the track? Teach the nose-down and the track seperately, then combine them?

 Quote: denise skidmore

So you're saying the proponents of the FST believe the form itself has function.

Alyssa is training her dog for one of the segments of a sport, with a form of tracking that does have relevance in the real world but not really to this thread.

 Quote: denise skidmore

I train obediece to make my dogs pleasant to live with, safe, and welcome wherever I take them.

We all do, whether we train our own dogs or others' dogs or both.

The thread took off from "age to use" of various collars to possibly getting away from overcorrections with a young dog by using a more exact training method.

You're right about that being O.T.

We want the topic to remain related to the title of the thread for other readers as well as posters.

Schutzhund and FST will have to be in a new thread, though.

Thank you.

FST's major application would be in Law Enforcement style work, where it is critical to retrace someone's actual footsteps.

In other forms of tracking, the ends justify the means, that is, if the dog finds what they are looking for, a person for example, it doesn't really matter how they get there.

In Search and Rescue, or in area searches, the dog is using more trailing and air scenting techniques. The use the scent coming off of the person, floating in the air, to find the person.

If, however, the objective is to retrace someone's footsteps, and find things they may have dropped along the way, as in a crime scene, then FST is the only way to go.

Happy to start a new thread, though.

Edited by (09/19/2008 01:07 PM)
Edit reason: Oops. Connie posted before I did.

I guess that collars (and maybe lessening overuse of collar corrections with precise training methods) has run its course. Good thread, though!

I don't read the whole board, be nice if you linked to the new thread you're making?