I've got a four month old german shepherd pup that I've been doing some tracking with. (waiting to get the video from Mr. Frawley) I read the articles online and first taught "find it" as described. My trainer that I use laid the first track for my pup at about age 12 weeks doing footstep tracking with food every two or three steps and he put wide easy turns into it. The pup follwed the track with no problems but he didn't just keep his nose to the ground. My trainer said that he wanted to see the pup air scenting as well. The next week, my trainer tied a piece of beef liver onto the back of his shoe where it would not quite touch the ground and laid another track. The ground cover went from bare dirt to grass to scrub. He put turns into it and then climbed into a tree. My pup followed the track with the nose alternating between down on the ground and up in the air. When in the air he was wanting to run it. He went straight to the tree where my trainer was and looked up into it and the trainer rewarded him for finding him with more liver.

A K9 officer on my husband's police department told me that my trainer was training my dog wrong. He said that the pup should not be doing turns and should always keep his nose down on the track and that there should be food in every footstep.

My trainer disagrees and says that he wants my pup to do both...air and ground and that my puppy does not need food drops in every step. In fact, he doesn't even put food drops down now. Just one at the beginning of the track and the reward given by the helper at the end of the track.

Is my trainer right or is the department k9 handler right? If my puppy shouldn't be doing turns yet why is he capable of doing them? Does he understand what he is doing or am I messing up by letting him do it? Should I stop everything until the video comes in? Any advice and opinions would really be appreciated. For what it's worth, my puppy really seems to enjoy doing the tracking. Thanks in advance.

Lori,
What is your end goal for this dog? SAR? SchH competition? AKC tracking trials?
The advice that I'd give depends on your goal, so let us know...

SAR with eventual certification hopefully. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Certification in tracking, trailing or air scent or both?

I must admit this (both the liver on the shoe and throwing in airscent before the dog is solid on trailing) sounds a bit unorthodox and I have seen a lot of variation in how people train trailing...........

Looking forward to what the experts say.

your confused??? your dog will be confused as well.

Your trainer is doing too much and combining too many behaviors.

Air scent is fine...should be for you at this point in his life. But not in association with tracking.

Track for the sake of tracking keep the basics down to a simply following the track not finding people in trees, this will force the dogs head up.

Airscent...run off from the dog and let 'em hunt you for play and fun and food or whatever. keep it really short and exciting.

Tracking toy or food for tracking no person at the end yet.
Make the track really really easy.

Keep training time to a minimum, short and exciting only until the dog is well over a year.

 Quote:

I've got a four month old german shepherd pup that I've been doing some tracking with. (waiting to get the video from Mr. Frawley) I read the articles online and first taught "find it" as described. My trainer that I use laid the first track for my pup at about age 12 weeks doing footstep tracking with food every two or three steps and he put wide easy turns into it. The pup follwed the track with no problems but he didn't just keep his nose to the ground. My trainer said that he wanted to see the pup air scenting as well. The next week, my trainer tied a piece of beef liver onto the back of his shoe where it would not quite touch the ground and laid another track. The ground cover went from bare dirt to grass to scrub. He put turns into it and then climbed into a tree. My pup followed the track with the nose alternating between down on the ground and up in the air. When in the air he was wanting to run it. He went straight to the tree where my trainer was and looked up into it and the trainer rewarded him for finding him with more liver.

A K9 officer on my husband's police department told me that my trainer was training my dog wrong. He said that the pup should not be doing turns and should always keep his nose down on the track and that there should be food in every footstep.

My trainer disagrees and says that he wants my pup to do both...air and ground and that my puppy does not need food drops in every step. In fact, he doesn't even put food drops down now. Just one at the beginning of the track and the reward given by the helper at the end of the track.

Is my trainer right or is the department k9 handler right? If my puppy shouldn't be doing turns yet why is he capable of doing them? Does he understand what he is doing or am I messing up by letting him do it? Should I stop everything until the video comes in? Any advice and opinions would really be appreciated. For what it's worth, my puppy really seems to enjoy doing the tracking. Thanks in advance.

Speaking from the perspective of one who has made a lot of mistakes..(so I am only an expert in the school of hard knocks)...........I can tell you there a lot of ideas out that that don't necessarily mix and match well.

After running into problems with an off lead trailing approach that a number of people advocate, and not gaining resolution of those problems.....I talked to a lot of people who advocated building a solid trailing foundation before progressing to air scenting. So much so that I have gone back to that.

Most of these people did use runaways but mainly to build an off lead alert if they were going to work the dog offlead in air scent work later and also used it for motivation, but sparingly.

Some proponents of trailing first felt it made a better dog; others felt it helped the handler learn to read and their dog better.

Another paradigm, also hotly debated, is too many runaways and the dog is working in visual prey drive and not hunt drive (THAT discussion starts a lot of arguments) and will revert to visual searching when under stress. There are counter arguments to this as well. A point with this argument is that in the natural hunting sequence the prey drive does not kick in until the prey is sighted -- but a lot of succesful SAR dogs are, in fact, started with runaways. The dust has not really settled on this argument, but I know a number of long term SAR folks who are transitioning to the hunt drive approach.

I think my next dog will not get serious scentwork other than fun motivational stuff until a year or so. There are a lot of other things we can do in terms of socialization, familiarization with the woods, and desensitization to fire trucks, etc. etc.

Until the dog matured I did really not see the focus needed to do longer problems. Then light bulbs started clicking. But dogs do mature at different rates.

I guess what I am saying is there a lots of different ways to skin a cat (but what he is doing in NOT one of the different ways I have heard about!)

I am still debating the approach of sport style tracking with food in the footsteps before motivational tracking for a young dog -- but I have a few more years to study that one. (and my next dog will probably be a cadaver dog anyway...since we get more cadaver calls than anything.)

For any approach you choose, I would ask to see dogs the trainer has worked run a real search problem and then have him clearly explain the training progressions you will go through to get to where you need to be and understand his foundtional assumptions. I would also want to know how many handlers this trainer has trained and their success with his techniques.

And anything I say is with the disclaimer that I am NOT an expert. So feel free to tear me up. It is a learning experience.

I started with the footstep tracking when my pup was young then moved on the Tracking through Drive. Currrently doing the air-scenting. In Canada you need both for RCMP level one for SAR work. The trainer I work with has 3 dogs certified through the RCMP and strongly recommended it. My 15 mth old GSD is now following 5- 12 hr tracks with lots of drive. As soon as he sees his harness he knows its time to have fun. He's picking up the air-scenting and articles fairly quickly.

Nancy, thank you and thank you to Kevin for sharing your opinions. I really think I need to take a big step backwards, get the videos, learn to understand what all is involved in tracking and then start working Gunner. I really don't want to mess this dog up as he has great bloodlines and great drives. (proud moms have to brag <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The trainer that I use is currently working with several people who are in the local SAR group and they come to my home to train every so often because we they say we have a little bit of everything for tracking conditions....hard surface, sand pit, pond, bare dirt, heavy scrub, wooded areas, police car, other animal distractions, etc. There have been times when I've watched them or when my dogs have been worked when I just don't "get" what the trainer is doing and that it doesn't add up to what I've read about on the list. I guess some doubts??? I can't stress enough that this man is a wonderful person and he has taught me and helped me to put strong obedience/advanced obedience on my dogs. It's just when we go towards bitwork or the tracking that I have doubts. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

So, opinions and advice are greatly appreciated and will be heeded.

There are certainly a lot of different approaches to SAR training that seem to work, but in it all I have NEVER heard anyone say you would mess up a dog by tracking first (unless you do forced tracking) then progressing to air scent. Dogs started off in air scent seem to have a harder time with trailing than the other way around.

I would certainly ask about his methods, experience, where he is going-his entire training program. A good trainer would not feel challenged by being questioned.

The approach you have chosen does make sense.

Also, I would not get too crazy with the obedience yet. Heavy duty obedience CAN result in a dog that is looking to its owner too much for cues and one that sometimes won't range well on offlead work.

There is a lot of stuff you can do also in regards to extensive socialization and exposure to a wide variety of experiences.