EQUIPMENT NEEDED FOR TRACKING

Tracking Harness (optional)

The harness should be soft and comfortable, preferably with adjustable buckles on the chest and girth. Two kinds of harnesses are commonly used. The nonrestrictive harness is perhaps more desirable in that it does not restrict or interfere in any way with the dog’s shoulder movement. The second type of harness, the restrictive harness, is often used by military and police organizations. A puppy harness can be cheaply made by using cotton webbing and stitching it on a regular sewing machine.

A tracking harness is not required for a Schutzhund trial, and many dogs compete in just their chain collars.

Thirty‑foot Tracking Lead (ten‑yard‑long line)

A ⅝‑inch webbed lead is readily available commercially and works well. However, if a lighter material is desired (for smaller dogs or for more lead sensitivity), a lead can easily be made from light cord. It is helpful with some types of leads to put a knot at fifteen feet.

Tracking Stakes or Location Markers

Tracking stakes are used for the benefit of the handler, not the dog. They aid the handler in remembering the exact location and direction of the track, so that he can either help the dog back to the footsteps or correct it back to them.

For this purpose, ⅜‑inch dowels that are approximately thirty‑six inches long are readily available in hardware stores and building supply outlets. A small bright piece of fabric or tape can be tied to the top of the stake to make it more noticeable in weedy terrain. The end of the stake can also be sharpened in a pencil sharpener to make penetration into the ground easier. Children’s arrows or surveyor flags also make good tracking stakes.

Old‑fashioned clothespins, sprayed a bright color, also can be clipped to vegetation on long, difficult tracks to indicate turns and direction.

Articles

The articles should be hand size or smaller, and a variety of fabrics–including leather and cloth–should be used. Old socks that are knotted work well, as do gloves. In many trials, the articles given the tracklayers by the organizing club are simply small flat squares of leather. For the purposes of training, leather scraps are available from shoe repair or craft shops.

The articles used for training should be about the same value (lightness or darkness of color) as the vegetation, so that the dog does not learn to search them out with its eyes instead of its nose.

^{Von Stephanitz strongly advocated the use of police tracking dogs as “detectives” that could track a human away from the scene of a crime and even identify that person among a group of others. (From von Stephanitz, The German Shepherd Dog, 1923.)}