Taking scent in each footstep of the track

Once the puppy thoroughly scours a scent pad on command, we are ready for the handler to proceed to tracking proper.

All the initial training, up to and including turns and articles, is done in optimal conditions. The tracks are laid on flat ground in evenly distributed grass that is about instep high (ankle high at most). The handler does not age the tracks any longer than it takes him to prepare them and then ready his dog for the start, nor does the handler work his novice tracking dog in very windy or inclement weather.

After laying a triangular scent pad with food in each comer, the handler departs from the apex of the triangle and slowly, with very small steps, walks perhaps ten or twelve feet. As he goes, he leaves a small bait in the middle of each footstep, and at the end of the short track he also places a food drop–a pile consisting of a handful of the bait.

Then he goes back to his puppy, walks the pup up to the scent pad and commands the pup to “Seek!” as before. The handler uses a finger to direct the puppy over the entire scent pad and then, before the pup lifts its head, out onto the first footstep of the track. Slowly and carefully, he walks the youngster down the length of the short track. He holds a very short leash to keep the puppy right on top of the footsteps and also to prevent it from rushing down the track. Gently, he holds the young dog to a slow, steady pace. He walks bent over beside the pup, running his finger along in the grass directly in front of the youngster’s nose, so that the pup works the track all the way to the end without ever lifting its head. When the animal reaches the food drop and begins to eat, the handler praises it enthusiastically.

Meanwhile, the assistant comes forward and takes hold of the pup; when the puppy looks up from eating the last of its food drop, it finds the handler already laying another short track a few feet away. The handler runs the puppy through three tracks like this in a row, and then plays with the puppy for a while on the field afterward. It is very important that the young dog understand that the end of the track means play and “quality time” with its master.

Assuming that it is tracking four or five times per week, the puppy continues working at this short distance for perhaps two weeks. Of course, each dog learns at its own rate. What is most important is that the pup completely master the scent pad and the short track before proceeding.

At this point the handler begins to increase the length of the tracks. He also begins to walk more and more normally as he lays the tracks, so that now his footsteps are separated by the usual distance rather than lying heel to toe. He increases the length of the track very gradually, and he still leaves a bait in every footstep. Only when the youngster works a fifty‑foot track continuously and with intense concentration does the handler begin to reduce the number of food drops.

Up to this point in training, the young dog has probably taken little notice of either the track scent or the air scent left wafting about in the breeze by the tracklayer. Instead it has been single‑mindedly preoccupied with sniffing for and finding the food scent. Now we must teach it that, although the food will no longer be distributed evenly all along the track, the key to getting from one bait to the next is following the track scent.

At first, when the handler is laying a track, he just omits a bait every now and again, so that the pup occasionally finds footsteps without food. Progressively and very carefully, the handler omits the bait more and more often, and the puppy begins to use the empty footsteps to guide it from one bait to the next. Now the young animal is beginning to learn the most important lesson that we have to teach it about tracking: It must search for and follow the track scent.

Gradually, we ask the puppy to work a longer and longer distance between baits. However, and this is the important point, the distribution of the baits along the track is random , meaning that the pup can never predict how far it will have to travel in order to reach the next bait. For example, a beginning track will have food at footsteps one, three, four, nine, eleven, twelve, fifteen and so on, while a more advanced track will have food in footsteps one, seven, twelve, twenty‑one, twenty‑two, thirty‑five, thirty‑nine and so forth. Because the puppy does not know whether the next bait is three paces away or sixteen, it keeps its nose down and searches intensively.

Over a period of several weeks, both the overall length of the tracks and the distance between the food drops gradually increase, until the puppy is tracking a distance of perhaps seventy‑five paces and in the process finding only two or three baits.

We may still work the puppy on three tracks each training session, but only one of them is as much as seventy‑five paces long. The other two are very short, and intended mainly for practice on the start and a few feet of very intense tracking. This too we randomize, running the short tracks and long ones in different order, so that when the pup starts a track it never knows whether it will end in ten feet or 150 feet.

Each track ends with a large food drop that rewards the pup for its work. Because we are depending upon food to motivate the youngster it must, of course, be brought to the tracking field keenly hungry. If for some reason it has little interest in tracking on a particular day, we immediately take it away from the field. We do not feed it that day (it can have water, of course), and we repeat the same track the next morning. We leave more than the usual amount of food at the end of the track, and if it does fine work we feed it well.

At this, the teaching stage of tracking, absolutely no corrections are made. The young dog is not scolded, physically punished or corrected or even told “No!” Instead, the handler helps and encourages the puppy in every possible way to understand what he desires. In short, the teaching phase of tracking concerns itself with preventing rather than correcting errors.