Planning a progressive training program

In tracking training one idea is paramount: The dog must always be successful. It must always obtain gratification (by completing the track correctly and then receiving its reward). Furthermore, the dog must rely entirely on itself to solve the track, rather than depending upon its handler to get it through any difficulty.

Therefore, the handler must carefully monitor the dog’s progress. He must accurately evaluate what the dog is capable of doing today and also predict what it will be able to do tomorrow. Each time that he takes the dog out to track it should be with the specific purpose of improving their performance as a team. Sometimes he does this by laying a track that the dog can easily manage, so that the animal practices tracking perfectly and gains confidence. On other occasions he improves performance by preparing a problem for the animal, some small change in one of the variables that determine the difficulty of the track–wind direction, frequency of the baits, age, changes in terrain or vegetation, etc. However, the handler must accurately predict what the dog is capable of doing on any given day so that the animal is neither discouraged nor forced to depend upon its handler to get it to the end of the track. The challenge is to plan each track in such a way that it is difficult enough to teach the dog something, but not so difficult that the animal cannot solve it itself with minimal intervention by its handler.

For this reason, it is often useful to keep a tracking journal. The handler records in it the conditions, length, age and general difficulty of the track, and then also records exactly how the dog negotiated it. By looking back through his journal the handler can take note of trends and important changes in performance, and also identify specific problems he might not otherwise notice. For example, the journal might reveal that the dog has difficulty with tracks over thirty minutes old in temperatures above 75°F, or that whenever it is on a particular medication its performance drops markedly.

GOAL 2: The tracklayer must lay well‑designed tracks and then remember exactly where they lead.

In much of the training, the handler acts as his own tracklayer. Later on, in the advanced stages of training, the tracklayer will be a training partner who lays mystery tracks so that the handler can practice relying upon and trusting his dog.

The tracklayer has much responsibility for the success of a dog‑handler team in both training and in competition. He must be able to lay all sorts of imaginative and ingenious tracks for training, exploiting natural features and vegetation to educate the dog. He must also be able to lay a series of regular and consistent regulation Schutzhund trial tracks.

When track markers are not used, he must be able to map out and/or remember exactly where the track leads. This way the handler training his dog knows when he can say “Good dog!” and when he must say “Phooey!” And in trial the judge also must be able to depend upon the tracklayer to correctly answer the question, “There, where the dog is going now, did you walk right there or not?”

In Schutzhund I competition, in which the handler lays his own track, he can obviously be of immense help to his dog if he has the knack of remembering exactly where he has walked.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Laying straight tracks

2. Laying a clean track

3. Mapping and remembering tracks

4. Laying regulation tracks