First of all, I'm just playing at it, just something to do with the kids. A little background, two of my dogs have psycho ball drive, so for rainy day games I have the kids hide the round kong in thier room and send in the dogs to find it when I yell" SOOK", they've got pretty good at it, altho mom's mad at all the wreckage they cause. Anyway, one time while playing fetch with them my arm got tired of throwing the ball overhand so I started to bowl with it, I bowled it a few times and it got lost so the dogs put thier nose to the ground and followed the line the ball rolled and found it in a depression, I thought well that was cool. The following day I got my eight year old daughter who feeds/treats them to kick the kong like a soccer dribble with short kicks, I made go out about thirty yard and turn left with the ball, when I lost sight of the ball in the grass I told her to stop kicking and walk of the field. I told the two dogs to "SOOK" and they followed the line of travel of the ball, over shot the turn came back and found the turn, followed it and found thier ball. I added another left turn and the same thing happened. Then I put leads on thier flat collars and put the leads under thier right front leg "pit" and immediatly got taken for a drag. My question is How do I get them to slow down to a walk? if I do that I think the over shoot will stop and my arm won't be yanked out of joint.

Later I plan on taking the ball away and just have my daughter just walk the course

Dennis, if you want to teach them to make solid corners you need to do FST with food. That will help to slow them down.
What they are doing is more on the order of trailing. Absolutely nothing wrong with that if finding the kids is your goal.

Thanks Bob


What's FST?

Yea, playing with the kids is the goal

Hi Dennis: The following is for schutzhund tracking: I think Bob is talking about foot step tracking. You need to put food in each footstep. Use just a small morsel, the size of a pea in each step. Put two lines on the dog, each attached to the collar & then one line under each front leg, sort of like plow lines. This will give you more control & make it easier to guide when necessary. If your dog is real eager & missing food in each step, just use gentle pressure to slow him down, no jerking at all. Start out with short straight tracks, progress to serpentines, then to turns. The thing is you do not want to shut the dog down (drive wise) in the beginning because force tracking really is a drag. So, make it real easy & use lots of verbal encouragement on the track & at the end. Since your dog is ball crazy, once you get to the end of your track bring the ball out of your pocket & make big play & praise. When you lay your track, either have the dog crated or tied where he can see you. This helps build the excitement for the dog. In the beginning hold the plow lines just at the dogs wither height. As he becomes more experienced, you start to move back on the lines.