talynsar

Most vets will recommend things like SD...they sell it in their stores and make money off it. Hmmmm,wonder why the are recomending it... Anyway, on the topic of nutrition, we are own our own. Most vets recieve little to no nutritional education and when they do, it's provided by SD or Purina. The Whole Dog Journal does a review of dry and canned foods every year. The list provided by one of the other posters pretty much mimics theirs. They did like the Chicken Soup for the Pet lovers Soul food. I feed my dog raw. I also ended up feeding the BC I just lost raw because he would start throwing up after being on a kibble for about 4 months. He never did that when he was on raw. It does depend on the dog.

It makes it easier if you have some obediance on a dog before starting any form of scent work. It helps with concentration levels and just your overall control of the dog. It also helps establish a working relationship. We require all dogs to have a CGC (which is not hard) to do scent work.

This is very true, depending on what form of SAR they are doing you are correct. Most USAR people (urban search and rescue/FEMA) want older dogs because they can evaluate drive and temperment better. They have to have a specific set of skills in a dog because of the certification and training methodology they are required to complete. They also ask their dogs to do high impact agility almost straight from the start so starting with an older dog means you dont' have the spin up time. However, they also might have a shorter working life due to the hazards of training and deployment. I also know of SAR people (specialists in archological human remains detection) that want their puppy imprinted on 200 yr old human bone from the time they are 5 weeks old. It all depends on what you want and how you train.

Hello, My suggestion, if you are wanting to do some tracking/trailing for fun, and you have a food motivated dog, is to look into spray tracks. I've seen several SAR K9's started with this method and went to a seminar where a PD K9 trainer used it and was very impressed with the theory behind it and how it worked. It starts you on a hard surface then moves to other surfaces...think of it like teaching your dog to smell for carrots, (scent on pavement) then moving to the 'stew' of many scents (grass surface where you have scent, disturbed dirt and crushed vegetation) but your dog has already learned to smell for carrots, so they only look for those in the stew and don't get lost, or overwhelmed. Not to mention, do NOT become a vegetation tracker. It also teaches nose down behavior as the beginning step, instead of letting the dog try to figure it out. It also does not rely on prey drive (or the tendancy to chase) to get the idea through their head. You can go here for a synopsis of the methodology. I also have it written up in draft form. http://uspcak9.com/training/scent.shtml You don't have to use a sweaty t-shirt, just use water that doesn't have chlorine in it. You can also teach down on article and incorporate it. Useful for when you loose your keys in the yard.