Hi all. I have a 1.5 year old female GSD that I have been working with in tracking and i am haveing a hard time getting her to indicate on an artical. She is a great tracking dog and is going to get a TD. but she needs to learn to indicate. She just keeps going past the artical looking for the person. Any ideas?

Dave

Teach her to indicate the articles off the track before introducing them on the track.

Natalie

Been there done that. She knows what the artical is but she is so people orentated that she needs to find that person. I know that its not a drive issue but more of a focus issue.

dave

What are you training her for in tracking? SAR, police dog or sport?

Natalie

You need to back up and get some control of her. If you do the proper ground work the dog will not pass up any object with human scent on it. Especially if it is scent descriminate.
Obedience is a must in this, because in teaching the indication you have to give a command (down, sit, bark...).
You need to break the game into parts, then when they are perfected put them together. Break them apart as you need to.

 Quote:

She is a great tracking dog and is going to get a TD.

Put food in the glove. When she finds the glove, praise the heck out of her and help her get the goodies inside that she can't get herself. In AKC tracking, they don't need to do a formal "indication". Just pausing to check the glove for food is good enough for a TD.

If you're wanting to work on articles for SAR, start with short tracks (remember that every time you change anything, change one element at a time, shorten the distance, and decrease the age), and when she gets to the article (which you ALWAYS know where it is), stop her and *cue* her trained indication, and the millisecond she gives it, praise her and let her continue on to the subject. She will learn that she gets to continue tracking after she gives the indication. You might even consider using a clicker to mark the indication, and the release to continue to track as her reward. Eventually her indication will become automatic, but you will need to cue it for a while. In addition, you might work on some scent discrimination exercises off the track, such as having her pick which item has your scent on it, or which person in a lineup belongs to an article of clothing.

Do you give her a scent article at the beginning of every track, or are you scenting her off the track itself?

David,

One thing that you can try and for obvious reasons only do this if you are working the dog on the street......At first you have to make the articles both easy to find and there has to be lots of play.....For street tracking we do not teach the dog to down on articles, as long as he indicates whether it be a head snap, mouths it etc...We don't care. We don't down a dog as it costs time on the track. We startwith large pieces of material, parts of shirt/towel etc......doesn't really matter.....we have the quarries sleep with the articles over night to really scent them up which makes it much easier for them to find and they carry them next to their skin throughout the day until they are ready to be used.....Place these on the track (make sure that the dog can't see it) and typically I haven't seen too many dogs that will not give a head snap or come back to the article when first introduced....when you see this, we allow the dog to grab the article and make a real fun game of tug of war......Then the dog is outed from the article and the track is resumed.......Now you have to watch the amount of play that you exert with the dog......don't play it up to the point where the article is more exciting then the end of the track as he will think that the game is over, but make it such that he wants to find the article and have some fun........over numerous tracks the tug of war gets less and less to the point where we get our desired result.......If they do not indicate the articles at first, make the article larger which in turn it will hold more scent.......

David BESSASON Trainer/Handler
Winnipeg Police Service