Motivating the dog to track

During the initial stages of training, the handler never scolds or corrects his dog on the tracking field. Tracking must be a lighthearted, enjoyable occasion for the animal.

The handler must provide the dog with strong incentives to track. The reward system we use varies with the characteristics of the particular dog and is designed to mesh with the animal’s strongest and most dependable drives. Regardless of the type of motivation used, the teaching progression remains basically the same (that is, first straight tracks, then turns and articles and last proofing and problem solving).

If the dog is started by using its natural desire to seek its handler out, an assistant is needed. The assistant holds the dog while the handler walks away, calling to the animal and encouraging it with, “Come! Come on! Let’s go!” After just a few paces, the handler steps out of sight behind a building, hedge or fence. There, hidden from the dog’s sight, he begins laying a track. Using stakes or flags to show the assistant where he has gone, he scuffs the ground heavily and walks perhaps fifty or seventy‑five yards in a new direction and then hides himself among some bushes or trees or even lies prone behind a tall clump of grass.

The assistant then puts the dog on its handler’s scent, walking around the barrier to the beginning of the track and encouraging it with, “Seek! Seek!” Some dogs will immediately fall to using their nose in this situation, and begin to drag the assistant off up the track toward the handler’s hiding place. The assistant walks with the animal on a short line, encouraging it to stay right on top of the handler’s track, pointing to the handler’s footsteps with his hand and preventing any circling or exaggerated quartering. When the dog finds its handler, its reward is a joyous reunion and a play session.

This method is a very old one, and seldom used nowadays. Because the track is so fresh (only a minute or two old) the dog tends to depend on drifting body scent to take it to its handler. In this way it learns to air scent rather than actually track footstep by footstep. This is especially true because of its generally high level of excitement, and the fact that it tends to search with its eyes for its master as it goes, which keeps its head up. Both of these factors interfere with the sort of head‑down, slow work that we desire.

Therefore, we commonly use this method only as a way of starting very young puppies in tracking. The purpose is not so much to teach the pup to track as it is to teach it to rely upon and believe in what its nose tells it, and also to teach it that scent work is great fun. Accordingly, we normally perform this hide‑and‑seek game only with a puppy that is from ten to fourteen weeks old, and the assistant simply turns the pup loose once its handler is well hidden. The puppy is allowed to work its way to its handler any way that it can, and the assistant just walks along with it to make sure that it does not travel in entirely the wrong direction.

As we have already pointed out, for teaching competitive tracking most trainers now use food to motivate the dog. Some trainers advocate introducing the animal to tracking by having the tracklayer pull a drag of smelly meat. A drag can easily be made by using an old pair of hose. The food (overripe herring or tripe is used in Germany) can be put in one toe and the tracklayer trails it behind him as he lays the track. At first the drag is used throughout much of the track, then gradually just a few feet at a time, and eventually not at all. To reward it for following the track, the dog finds a substantial quantity of food at the end (not the drag meat, which is by then a little worse for wear, but its regular food or some favorite treat).

Glen Johnson describes in his book an excellent structured program using food drops as the dog’s reward. The method can easily be adapted to Schutzhund tracking, and is especially useful with a dog that is not a natural retriever (not “ball crazy”). The animal is taken off its normal daily ration of food. One‑half of the quantity of food normally given to it in a day is instead fed to it on the track in evenly divided amounts and at specified intervals along the track. Every seventh day the dog receives a healthy portion of food and the handler does not take it tracking. It is important, of course, that the food given on the track be nourishing and of high quality.

The now classic method of training competitive Schutzhund tracking dogs involves combining the use of food and a retrieving object–like a ball or a kong. The method is similar to Johnson’s, and might be called a modified food‑drop approach. However, the food drops (or baits as we call them) are more numerous, much smaller and placed at irregular and unpredictable intervals along the track.

We begin a young dog or puppy by placing bait in virtually every footstep of a very short track. At the end of this track the puppy finds a large food drop and also its ball or some other toy, and the handler spends time playing and romping with it after every tracking session.

Through this method, the dog gains a strong desire to track, and yet learns the habit of methodically searching out each and every one of the tracklayer’s footsteps.

For these baited tracks, no assistant or tracklayer is necessary. The handler does all the work himself, leaving the animal tied up or crated, laying the track and dropping baits, and then returning to his dog and running the track with it.

In order to maintain the animal’s desire and enthusiasm for tracking, the dog is always brought to the tracking field keenly hungry. The handler takes it out of the car or truck and ties it up or puts it in a crate where it can watch the track being laid. While the handler lays the track he calls to the dog and teases it. In addition, before he goes to lay the track he untangles and spreads out the tracking line and harness so that he can quickly put them on the animal when he returns, as any sort of delay at the start of the track can diminish the dog’s enthusiasm.