Back Story

I've already posted about how I used to track with my first Dobe, Jemma. I can't remember why we stopped tracking--it might have been because that's about the same time I started doing agility. I've wanted to get back to tracking for years but just could never get started again. I'm pretty famous for never going *back* to anything. Once I stop doing something I rarely-- if ever-- go back to doing it again. But with tracking I think the thing that stopped me was primarily because I didn't have anyone to help me with the training.

It's pretty difficult to find someone who's really knowledgeable who offers tracking classes. Sometimes clubs will offer seminars but just like all seminars, once the presenter goes home you're still left with no one to help. And unlike obedience or agility, it's hard to tell when you're not doing it right. We don't know what the dog is scenting when they track. We can only hope they're following our track. We often wind up guiding them along the track without even realizing it. And if we hit a training snag, it's hard to even identify the problem.

So, my first thought was that maybe I could get someone who I knew did tracking to come over on a regular basis to help me. There are several really experienced trackers around my area but unfortunately they were too busy to be able to committ to that kind of schedule. However, a couple of them suggested I contact Allison who is a tracking judge and Westie breeder who lives not far away. Allison has lots of experience not just with tracking but also with teaching tracking so I had the idea that maybe I could get a few people together who all wanted to learn tracking and we could bring Allison up on a regular basis. Meanwhile we could help each other with training (maybe somewhat like the blind leading the blind but still fun) and lay tracks for each other.

So earlier this month Allison came up and gave us a great basic tracking seminar and helped us get our dogs started. She suggested we track only a couple of times a week and to keep the tracks short and motivational. Her approach to starting dogs is different than the method I used 20 years ago. Instead of putting in straight tracks for beginner dogs, Allison uses tracks that are serpentine in nature. That way instead of teaching dogs that all tracks are straight and then suddenly introducing turns, she introduces the idea that tracks can go anywhere right from the beginning. It's sort of the same idea as teaching agility dogs how to turn over jumps right from the beginning rather than letting them blast straight ahead for 6 months and suddenly expecting them to be able to collect in front of a jump. I think it's brilliant.

So ever since I've been tracking Zodi about 2-3 times a week just putting in a couple of short-ish tracks and then running them right away. I think we're doing OK but it's kind of hard to tell for sure. Luckily, Allison is coming up in a couple of weeks so hopefully I won't have enough time to really wreck her until she can help fix some of the problems I've created for myself.


One of the best things about tracking, in my opinion, is that you can't force it on the dog. You have no way of knowing whether the dog is really tracking the scent or not. Most dogs are plenty smart enough to pretend to track if the handler is too compulsive or makes too many mistakes. I'm sure more than one handler has thought their dog was tracking like mad only to discover their mistake when the dog pulls them straight to the freshest pile of deer poop they can find and then joyously rolls in it.

The other thing about tracking that many people don't find out until they get started is that there's a lot for the handler to think about.. Laying tracks is not the easiest thing I've ever done. You have to be able to walk a straight line while carrying food, articles, flags and a clipboard all the while making notes, counting off how many yards it's been since you made a food drop, noticing that you just walked over a gopher hole that's probably way too much of a distraction for your dog at this stage of the game noting on your map which way the wind is blowing, whether that blade of grass is different enough from the other blades to go on your map as a marker for the turn you're about to put in and making sure you don't drop your articles all over the track. Oh and don't forget to make a note of the time you put the track in, where you put the crosstracks and what time it was and then, just as you go to run your dog you see a troop of boyscouts setting up a picnic in the middle of your track's third leg.

But for some reason that's just so much fun. And so worthwhile when you see your dog nail that turn and pull down the final leg toward the article. Who knew?

Still getting started.

Took Zodi out on 3/22 (last Monday) to do some tracking in the fields behind my agility field. I had just received her tracking harness and line in the mail on Saturday and I couldn't wait to use it. I ordered the harness and line from Paw Mark (www.pawmark.com) and they're pretty brightly colored. I have a habit of losing things so I wanted to be sure I wouldn't overlook them in the field.

The evening was pefect for tracking being cool but not too dry. I had decided that I needed to do a couple of short tracks with a fair amount of food because recently Zodi has been stopping a lot (or what I think is a lot) on her tracks and having to be restarted.

It turned out neither were very short, probably between 50-70 yards but she's such a big dog that if I drop food every other body length or so, the track quickly stretches out. Plus I want to try to curve the track [see back story, next post]and of course I have to remember not to put the flag where I've made a drop so before I know it I've gone about 50 yards.

But I decided to see what happened so I brought her up to the first one when it was about 10 minutes old and she got a pretty good start, pulling out to about 8 feet which is the length of line I'm giving her at this point. She went straight down the track for about 20 feet, missing 2 or 3 food drops and then stopped for the fourth one.

Just before she she gets to a food drop she'll go off track several feet and then stop and turn back and search for the food. She does this almost every time she gets a food drop although I'd say she's missing 3 out of 4 drops. She pulls so hard and she's so fast that we whizz past them before I even realize it. I often see them as I go over them. At this point I'm trying hard to drop the food in a place with less cover so I can see it.

When we got to the first turn I noticed I'd forgotten to put in a flag (there's so much to think about when you're laying a track!) so I was pretty thrilled when she just kept her nose down and followed it around to the drop beyond it. After that she started quartering and missed the next drop and then stopped when I wouldn't let her go off in another direction. She was fairly close to the glove at this point so she re-started herself and then saw the glove and had a good time with that for a minute or two. She wasn't vey interested in playing with it and pretty quickly started following where I'd walked on to lay the next track so I unhooked the line from her harness and attached it to her collar.

Attaching a line to Zodi's collar is a little like clipping a leash on a semi. She is so strong and so big that you just don't have a chance to to stop her before she's barrelling onto the next item of interest. Sometimes I wrap a leash around her waist and then hook it to her collar and then she doesn't pull at all. I had to laugh when Allison Platt [see back story for more on Allison] said in her seminar that it was important not to discourage your dog from pulling on the line when they're tracking. I don't think I'll ever have a problem with that.

When we got to the next starting flag I reattached the line to her harness and allowed her to snarf up the chicken I'd put down. She didn't start off nearly as well on this track which was in a part of the field where the wind was blowing across the track from left to right. She barely made any progress as she kept pulling go off the the left so I'd have to stop at which point she'd just stop and stand there looking at me. I had to re-start her 3 times and she still managed to miss most of the food drops.

Finally we got to a point where a tractor had left a rut in the field and I purposely put a piece of chicken there so I'd be able to tell if she found it. she did and then finished the track nicely.

So I've got a lot of questions for Allison and I'm hoping she really meant it when she said we coule email her :-)

Welcome to my blog.

I've recently begun training my 2 year old Dobe, Zodi, in tracking and decided to keep a record of our training progress in this blog. I only have a little experience with tracking training and that's from about 20 years ago when I got a TD on my first Dobe, Jemma, so I consider myself a complete beginner.

So much has changed since I've done any tracking. I was looking at the AKC tracking website and noticed they have a Tracking Invitational now (www.akc.org/events/tracking/national_invitational) which I think is really cool. It's new, only a few years old and it really gives people who already have their Tracking Championship something else to shoot for. They didn't even have a Tacking Championship 20 years ago and hadn't even started awarding titles for VST back then.

I'm excited about all these new opportunities in tracking. Tracking is something I've always enjoyed for several reasons. It's done outdoors in the fields and woods where I love to spend my time and it has very different training challenges from agility and obedience. In tracking--it seems to me--the trainer offers puzzles for the dog to solve and then allows the dog to use her brain/nose to solve them. The trainer shouldn't be interfering or leading the dog, just shaping the dog to stay relatively close to the track (in AKC tracking anyway, I can't answer for other types).

And there's just no feeling like the one I get when I see my dog settle into her harness and pull smoothly down the track and through a turn. It gives me goosebumps. I've heard people say they can't think of anything more boring to do with their dog than tracking so I guess you either get it or you don't. I defintely do.

I love that this resurgence in tracking interest on my part has corresponded to several things that seem to be coincidence but may be something else. I've been experiencing some--not exactly boredom--with agility lately. It's more a feeling that I've gone as far as I'm going to go and a feeling of spinning my wheels or running in place. I'm a little tired of spending so much time on one thing when there are so many other things out there to do. Tracking is a new adventure that I really need right now and I have a great dog to do it with, too. Zodi is a little immature for agility still but tracking is such a natural thing for a dog to do. It sort of works better with a Dobe's instincts, I believe.

Well, that's just a little intro to what this blog is (hopefully) going to be about. I hope you come back soon and see that we've made some progress and that we're having lots of fun.