I have a dog in our training group that is a great tracker…. He will signal track loss within 6” of overshooting a corner. Once he hits the corner he will “T” the corner, checking first to the right then if nothing….checks to the left.

I can tell that the dog begins to stress a bit with acute angles of less than 90 degrees. He begins his “T” and does not locate the new leg. The searching begins to become more hectic, nose will come up a bit and once the new leg is located it will take most of that new leg to calm the dog back down and get him back tracking at his normal A+

I want to work with this dog to make him “circle” automatically to the right upon experiencing track loss. What are some opinions on how to go about creating this behavior?

My thought was to series right turn only tracks with decreasing angles at the corners until the right circle becomes the learned response to any corner regardless of what direction the track turn takes be it left or right. If we can get this down, we will take this dog from great to outstanding…… opinions???

Question, what causes the hectic behavior at track loss? I think that your basic idea of circling is good, I might add a heavily stomped corner of whatever angle you are working on to help the dog with the problem angles. Other than that your plan seems fine.

Start adding serpentine tracks during your straight line tracking practice and gradually increase the width of the serpentine distance off the main axis of the track.
That works for most dogs with that problem as long as you have the time to put in the number of new type training tracks.

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Start adding serpentine tracks during your straight line tracking practice and gradually increase the width of the serpentine distance off the main axis of the track.
That works for most dogs with that problem as long as you have the time to put in the number of new type training tracks.

I am little slow tonight...have problem picturing this. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

You are saying to put tight corners? Would not straight legs of track than be too close to each other and confuse dog?

And that circling stuff, that is suposed to be natural behaviour, right? To the left, until he finds track. Maybe i am having trouble understanding you, but is not that "T" just tighter form of circling? And dog just needs more experience to make himself more shure into himself?

Yes, this are all questions... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Jeff…. The hectic behavior only occurs with the acute angle track…. The dog is checking 90 deg. To 180 deg left and right for the new leg. When he can’t find it the stress starts to build. This is an extremely high drive dog. The handler knows that once the dog checks right then left and finds nothing that either it’s an extremely acute angle or a back track. He will work the dog back until he picks up the new leg. By this time the dog is starting to get stressed.

Ivan…. My goal with this dog is to teach him that if he looses track all he has to do is circle clockwise and he will find the track….. the handler will help him do this with proper line handling. Were hoping that if we change the behavior and get this dog to circle upon track loss we will eliminate the stress build up in this particular dog. If you ever have seen Ed’s level 1 tracking tape with the RCMP there are some excellent examples of what we would like to see.

Will….I’ll pass the idea onto the handler. He’s pretty good at running 7 or 8 training tracks a week so it should be no problem.

Matt,

Although this is somewhat of a problem...at least you dont have a dog that goes into high gear trying to relocate a lost track or turn. What a pain to read a dog like that.

I think will has the right idea here. Once the dog is comfortable working in a serpetine pattern without stressing, your idea to get him to circle is a good one.

Howard