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I'm thinking of getting Zoe into tracking for fun and b/c I'm heading to a weeklong dog's camp next month where she can get a good start in it, doing it a few minutes each day. Zoe has very strong prey/chase drive, and will often chase game through the woods on our hikes. Will tracking heighten her ability to find wild game to chase?? I've hesitated teaching her before b/c I didn't want to teach her how to better use her nose and start bringing me back rabbits and such. Should I not worry about this??

 

Thanks!

Laura

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Interesting question, Laura. My (rather inexpert) opinion is that it probably wouldn?t be a problem. In tracking, you?re asking the dog to channel a natural instinct, and use it for a particular purpose, indicated by you. My previous boy was tracking one day when a big hare started up from the grass a couple of feet from him, and took off. Sam, bless his heart, totally ignored it, and kept his nose and his mind right on the track ? pity he?d already failed at a corner :rolleyes: ! He didn?t have a huge prey drive, but he would happily go chase game, so in his case, when he was totally committed to a track, he could ignore distractions. My inclination in your situation would be to go for it and do the tracking.

 

Sounds like your dog camp will be a lot of fun. It?ll be good to hear about it.

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All dogs track on a daily basis. Training tracking to them is to try to get a specific track followed, and then learn to read the dog when the track is being taken. This means that they concentrate on the one track and do not let all the other scents and tracks deter their concentration. The handler has to know when the dog is testing a new track and when the dog is on the original track that was the task in the first place.

 

In summary you get your dog to hone in on only one of their hundreds of scents that they are able to perceive. I don`t think this will make a dog go for game any more than usual. but the ability to stick with one will be improved.

 

Tracking is a great way to bond with your dog and develop a useful partnership with a skill that could become useful.

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As already stated. Dogs track everyday. However, the more you allow your dog to chase game you will complicate your training. If the dog finds tracking game more interesting than tracking humans then you will have a dog tracking critters. When it comes to a for real human track and the dog gets bored or loses the track he will start crittering. The consequence being a dog that lies to you and at best fails a test, at worst misses a injured/missing person.

If you are serious about tracking or SAR, stop letting your dog chase game immediately. The longer it continues the harder it is to fix.

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Thanks. I'm not really interesting in getting into SAR or competitive tracking, just as a for-fun activity to do with Zoe. She doesn't really get any hardcore training, other than occassional maintenance stuff for agility and flyball, and competitions for those as well, so I thought a new just-for-her&I fun thing would be cool. I have access to the training for free at camp and at seminars and workshops after camp, so figured I'd take advantage of it. Maybe when she gets older and can no longer handle the jumping, we might get more serious, but for now, just for fun. She's extremely food-motivated, so will ignore anything for a piece of kibble. :rolleyes:

 

-Laura

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Just wondering if any one knows of a tracking club in Ontario (preferably in driving distance of the GTA) as well as flyball clubs and agility clubs, is there a site for these? I haven't had very much luck with my searchs thus far, though truth be told I am still a newbie at all of this.

sara

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Laura,

You must first separate scent and sight tracking. If your dog is seeing mvmt. in the woods that stimulates her prey drive that does not mean teaching her to use her nose will make that problem worse. If she is rewarded in chasing by catching the prey - that will make her chasing worse. It's self rewarding.

 

When you talk about scent tracking you have to again separate a high nose from a deep nose. A high nose uses the wind to help find the target - commonly seen in law enforcement, SAR, etc dogs. Deep noses are seen more in Schutzhund dogs. Deep noses are tracking step by step.

 

Scent tracking won't stimulate your dogs prey drive anymore than it already is. If you teach long tracks , corners, cross tracks, etc you will develop the dogs ability to concentrate more, determine the fresh track, and scent out her prey much more effeciently than an undeveloped nose.

 

My tracking dog is much better at working any scent (treats, human, prey, whatever) than my untrained dogs. She can maintain the track much longer than they can simply because she's been trained to do it.

 

I won't mention how dangerous it is to have a dog that chases prey through the woods. Those dogs can come up on a very mad coon, cross the path of bigger predators, bring other predators to the area by crashing through the woods, etc. One advantage of teaching real tracking is that the dog learns to work 30 feet or so away from you. If you teach the articles on your tracks you may learn more control over the dog at a distance.

 

I am not on this board much anymore so if you want more info just send me a message.

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I know that when we started Ruger's trailing training he did very little crittering. But he is always on lead on a trail. More for safety. He will jump off of anything. Once we got ducks as pets, his prey drive kicked up quite a bit. He still doesn't critter too bad on a trail. But I can also tell when he is. His body totaly reads different. Deer are his favorite! I think you should try it. I know the bond between us has become soooo much stronger now. I have learned to trust him more and he trusts me alot more now. We may be in training for a long time (got a late start) but it is his job, and we even call it "going to work". Trailing is a great activity for BC's. Good Luck!

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I think a lot of it depends upon the individual dog. My Labrador, for example, was so focused on a track that he'd track right over dead critters, right past barking dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, etc. Nothing could break his focus on the track, and crittering was never an issue with him. We did SAR tracking for nearly two years before he was diagnosed with elbow dysplasia and retired, then I started doing some ACK tracking with him (he already has his TD; we were hoping to take a TDX test this Fall) but he started limping again so I decided to take a break.

 

I've seen different dogs with different levels of focus. Some are pretty easily distracted and will leave the track to check out mouse holes or feathers or poop, etc., while others, like my Lab, are extremely focused. Then you have everything inbetween.

 

I don't do tracking with Lucy, but we do airscent (for human). I have noticed an increase in her ability to locate critters since she started working in airscent. While I agree that dogs track/trail/airscent every day and already "know" how to do it, I think that with Lucy, the skill has been honed by her training to where she is much better at it now than she would have been without the SAR training, and like a BC, she is using that honed skill for her own purposes when she has the opportunity.

 

So, I do think "crittering" is a concern, but as others have mentioned, you learn to recognize the difference between when your dog is on track and when they are goofing off.

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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.

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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.

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