Only the NOSE really KNOWS; a tracking perspective

By Armin Winkler

Part 1

Tracking -books, -videos, -articles, and -seminars have one thing in common.  They are written, produced or taught by people.  That factor also presents the biggest flaw in tracking:  The human perspective on the subject.

As people, I believe we have to accept our position in tracking.  We are to a large degree spectators to this “magic act” that is referred to as tracking.  What a dog’s nose is capable of has often been written about and documented.  What the limitations of a dog’s nose are, we still don’t clearly know.  It is a very difficult position to accept, we are trainers, and as such we like to play an active part in the training of our dogs.  We want to show them, guide them, help them, coax them, or force them to do it.  But what is it?

In all honesty, I have to say I don’t truly know.  I don’t believe any human does.  A dog’s nose is a miracle, and what they can do with it is nothing short of miraculous.  And just like any other miracle, we admire it and marvel at it, but understanding it is just beyond our capabilities.

That realization makes tracking and in fact all scent work disciplines quite a bit different than any other working dog discipline.  When doing scent work, we have to reverse the roles of trainer and dog somewhat.  While it is always a human trainer who takes the lead role in obedience training and protection training, in all scent work we have to allow the dog to take the lead.  After all, he is the one with the nose that knows.

Those among you who have read some of my articles in the past know I like to draw certain parallels between a dog’s natural and instinctive behaviors and what we are trying to achieve with the dog in training.  My approach to tracking does follow that general guideline.  However, I am talking about sport tracking here.  Schutzhund tracking to be specific, or I guess more correctly after the recent name change VPG tracking.

Tracking is a natural behavior for dogs.  However, the natural tracking has one common component that we will not find in sport tracking and that is the deposited scent of the creature that left the track.  This is the scent that the dog pursues, and it is always the same scent.  Whether the dog follows another dog, or a cat, or a deer, or any other critter that may be running around out there.  The scent remains constant it is always the scent of the animal the dog follows.

How is that different from sport tracking?  Well, in sport tracking we ask the dog to follow a biologically meaningless odor.   I know I am going to catch some criticism for that statement, but I’ll stand by it anyway.  Konrad Most conducted experiments in the early part of the last century, and documented the fact that the dog does in fact follow the scent of the disturbed environment more competently and more accurately than any potentially deposited human scent left behind by the track layer.  The famous “tracking wheel” experiment he documented in 1917 made that point very clearly.   No matter what the surface is, it is the impact the tracklayer had on that surface that makes up the largest part of the scent for the dog.   The residual odors that are deposited on or near the track by the tracklayer add an individualized signature to the track that expert trackers can in fact identify.  But for the purposes of teaching fundamentals we have to leave that part in the background and concentrate on the part of the track that makes up the majority of the scent and is also bound to the actual tracking surface.  That is the scent created by the damage done to the surface.

Now let me return to my point above.  A dog may sniff a disturbance of the ground due to curiosity, but the scent has to the dog no biological significance.  Therefore, I say in sport tracking we are asking the dog to follow a meaningless odor.

The first task in tracking training then has to be to attach meaning to a previously meaningless odor.

Scent Prioritization

The first thing we have to teach in tracking training is scent association.  Associate something that is meaningful to a dog with the odor that up to that point had no meaning for the dog.  There are several motivations that drive a dog to pursue scent in nature.  One is based on the social desires of the dog and its goal is to find companionship.  One is to find a mate. And another is to locate food.  For the purposes of training the most useful motivation is the one in the food-gathering realm; in other words food drive.  We use the dogs desire to eat to associate meaning with the odor of disturbed ground surface.  At this stage the association is food.

Here is a technique that I have had good success with. I trample an area that measures approximately one and a half body lengths of the dog by one and a half body lengths of the dog.  So the size of the dog determines the size of the square.  I trample the entire area down, so that every inch of the inside of this square has disturbed ground.

I personally prefer grass as the beginning surface.  I feel that trampled grass makes a more obvious scent for the dog, and also the dog is less likely to see the area than he would be in dirt.  Also, in grass the dog has to use his nose to find the food more than on dirt.  Having said that though, it is just a preference.  If dirt is more available, starting on dirt is certainly not going to ruin your dog.

Inside this trampled square area I scatter a handful of food, being careful that no food lands outside the disturbed area.

At this point, the concept of scent prioritization becomes very important.  What does that term mean?  Well, for the dog there will be two clear scents in this trampled square.  One has meaning, his food.  One has no meaning, the odor of the track, crushed grass, insects, dirt, etc. whatever the ground may consist of.

In order for the dog to make the association that becomes useful and helpful for us in the future, the meaningless scent has to be priority #1, and the scent of the bait has to be priority #2.  In other words, the scent of the track has to be the primary scent for the dog, while the scent of the bait has to be secondary.  How do we achieve this?  Fairly simple actually, we stomp our foot down on the surface we are going to track on and then drop one single piece of bait into that stomp.  Then we get down on the ground on our hands and knees and we close our eyes about a foot over the stomp.  Start sniffing and lower our nose towards the stomp with the piece of bait.  Whatever you smell first is the primary scent.  A dog’s nose is much better than ours, but ours is good enough to determine which emits the stronger odor.  If we can smell the bait before we smell the disturbance to the ground, then this bait is not going to be useful to us in the association process.  Hot dogs or cheese are not good for that reason.  They smell too strongly.

I prefer to use just dry dog food kibble.  Some kibble smells stronger than others, but do the little test and you’ll see whether or not it is OK to use.

Kibble also helps in other ways. It is always available, it is easy to pack, no cutting up necessary, no big deal if you waste some if the dog has a bad day.  And let’s not forget that it will not turn green and slimy in your pocket if you forget it in a coat.

For dogs that are picky eaters, we may have to be a little more innovative.  I use a low temperature dried liver, it works well and has to the human nose virtually no odor.  Dried beef or lamb lung works equally well.  Dried beef heart is OK, but smells more than the liver, so make sure prioritization is maintained.

Sometimes having a second variety of kibble in the house that is used for tracking only to make it a little more special may already help a lot.

Let me make another point here.  The dog may not go crazy over kibble, but as long as he likes it enough to look for it and find it in the scent of the square, the dog is learning what we intend for him to learn, that the scent that had no meaning does have some.  This association is crucial.

Should the order of scents be reversed, the dog may never treat the track scent (in this case secondary) as truly meaningful, and always look for his primary scent.  Even if the dog uses the secondary scent (the track) to guide himself along.  The scent is of secondary importance to the dog.

So, once I have decided what bait I will use, that is the food I will scatter in the above-mentioned square.  Let it sit for a few minutes, then get the dog and bring him to the square.  Give the dog the command to track (“such” or whatever), and if necessary point to one of the pieces of food in the square.  Then let the dog do his thing.  Occasionally remind him with the command to track, so he learns the command as well, but the work is pretty much up to the dog.

I have a three-strike rule for dogs, especially young beginner dogs.  They are allowed three chances to work in the square.  So if they wander out, I point at the square, maybe even a piece of food, and I show them what to do again. If they leave three times, though, they are done.  No playing, no walk nothing to reinforce that behavior in any way shape or form.  After the third time he leaves the square, he is put back in the crate and that is it.

If he works well and shows several times that he is choosing to stay inside the square, we pull him out of there and then he gets whatever we had planned for him.  Some ball playing, or a walk or whatever.  Maybe I should mention a basic rule of thumb here as far as when a young dog or beginner dog should be pulled out of the square. Obviously as I said above the dog has to show a behavior that says that he is choosing to stay in the square.  I think I should be a bit clearer about what that looks like.  A dog will audibly sniff around in the square and pick up pieces of food as he finds them.  Some dogs are quite noisy about that and sound like little “truffle hogs” as they sniff and snort for their food.  As the dog now works towards an edge (of the square), the dog will notice that the outside of the square smells different.  He will take a sniff and pause, maybe sniff it again, then deliberately bring his head back into the square, and sniff that area.  The sound of sniffing he made before will continue and he’ll get to a piece of food and eat it.  That little scenario has all the pieces we need for learning in it.  The dog works in the scent, the dog compares the scent, then returns to the successful scent and finds confirmation (food).

For all intents and purposes that is enough in the beginning to leave it at.  Of course the better the dog gets the longer we ask him to work. But in the beginning it is perfectly OK to pull the dog away after one such revelation.

In order to keep this brief, I will not go into the many details on how to manipulate food drive for dogs of different ages to help with motivation and commitment.  Most do well within the above parameters.  But any readers are welcome to contact me with specific questions.

Scent commitment

As the dog learns to associate the scent of the disturbed ground with finding goodies, we will see a reaction on the part of the dog every time he comes to an edge.  The dog will comparatively sniff the disturbed and undisturbed ground on either side of the edge. The choice to stay within the disturbed area, because that is where he has had success in the past, is a demonstration of the onset of the proper scent association.  Too often people are in a big rush to get out of the square.  “I want my dog to learn to track” is what I hear.  I want people to understand that the dog is learning to track as he is working in the square.  Puppies will very often work a square very instinctively and nicely and people hurry on to get them onto tracks.  I don’t follow that concept.  Puppies are governed by their stomachs, and as such do food-motivated activities extremely well.  This is by no means an indication that the dog has learned to track.  As puppies get older, they become curious about the world and exploration becomes part of their fun. Their attention span seems to start varying and things other than food seem to actually matter to them.  These natural parts of growing up will cause problems in tracking.  Because they are no longer motivated by only one thing.  When then is the right time to take the dog from a square and put him on a track?  Well, what I’d like to see is a certain level of scent commitment, not only scent association.  Commitment cannot be seen in a very young puppy.  Not being tempted by other things is not commitment.  Acknowledging other outside factors and making a commitment to the scent in the square and staying with that scent is something that has to be observed.  It almost looks as if the dog is inside a glass box with invisible walls.  But there are no walls, just the edges of the scent of disturbed surface.

There are other reasons why working in the square longer than a few sessions is beneficial.  It allows us to study our dogs.  We can see when they compare disturbed and undisturbed ground.  We can see when they just wander around, but are not really searching or even sniffing.  We can see when they notice something else interesting.  We can see them stopping to track and we tell them to get back to work.  Just to name a few.  All those behaviors have body language clues with them.  We should be aware of what those clues mean, and what they look like.  Because the time will come when we have to be able to read these clues from 33 feet back at the end of a line in a trial.

Work in the square long enough to give yourself the opportunity to give your dog the first “Pfui! Get back to work!”  Wait until you see that the dog is committed to the scent in the square.  Because all a square is, is a track that doesn’t go anywhere.  And all a track is, is a square that is really, really stretched out.  Commitment to the scent is the key to good tracking later on.

Let me make an additional point here.  Tracking is about scent work, identifying it, and staying with it.  Yes, eventually also following it, but first and foremost it is about sticking with the scent that matters.  In my opinion too many young pups learn that tracking means going somewhere.  But that isn’t what a dog should learn.  Tracking is about using the nose, not using the legs.  We are not teaching a funny looking “Voraus” here.  We are teaching the dog to use his nose with a purpose and in a deliberate manner.  Dogs that have learned to get walking as soon as they hear the command “such” are in trouble, because the biggest part of the brain should be on the task at hand, and that task is working scent. Make sure the dog learns this lesson before he learns anything else about tracking.

Let the nose lead the way

So you may ask when is it time to actually get the dog onto a track.  As I said above, when a certain degree of commitment can be seen.  The dog works diligently, and without interruption, without needing help and constant reminder.  A dog who works the edges of the square accurately and with a clear understanding of which side is the important side.  A dog who works uninterrupted for about 3 minutes or longer.  A dog who when he sees or hears or even smells a distraction and gets a command to get to work does so without needing to be shown where to sniff and what to do. That is a dog who can be presented with a track.

So how do we do that?  I always do a square.  It gets the dog into the right frame of mind it settles him and refreshes the association and level of commitment we are looking for.  It also let’s me gauge the dog.  A dog who is having a bad day for whatever reason should not be presented with a new challenge.  If the dog does not act optimally on the square, leave it at that and do not proceed.  Only proceed onto the track if the dog did what has become his consistent best on the square.

The track, which was laid at the same time as the square is laid this way.  A trampled triangle, each side about 2- 21/2 feet long, trampled like the square, food scattered in it like in the square.  At one of the tips of the triangle, we stomp our first footstep.  It should be about 2 inches from the tip.  The next step should be 1-2 inches ahead and 1-2 inches to the side of the first step.  Do not make the gaps too far apart.  And mostly, do not make the gaps too wide.  In each step place one piece of kibble (not a handful).  Put down about 20 steps.

The dog is put in the square, and started there.  If he works with good concentration and settles well, then after about ½ a minute to 1 minute, take him by his collar and kind of pull him to the triangle.  Don’t do anything that breaks his mindset too much and don’t influence him harshly, so his drive stays up.  That way, if anything his drive may go up a bit by being pulled away from what he wants.

Bring him into the triangle and give him the command to track.  Let him get to work.  He will work the triangle like he worked the square.  But like in the square, he will do comparisons along the edges.  In the triangle the edges will inevitably lead him to the first step outside the triangle that also has the disturbed ground odor and also has food in it.  This should pull him right along from footstep to footstep.  The size of the gap is important to keep the dog in his natural ground sweeping action and being able to reach into the next step without having too large a break in the scent.

In the beginning it is quite common that a dog may turn around and look as if he does not know which way to go as far as the direction of the track is concerned.  That is no big deal dogs work through that quite easily.  Things that are important.  Do not show the dog the first footstep.  If he works the triangle the way he worked the square in the past, he is doing fine.  Manipulate the distance of the first step in some of the subsequent tracks maybe even having it touch the tip of the triangle.  The dog has to follow his nose when he tracks, nothing else.  So his nose has to lead him out of the square, and it will.  Trust me.  If it doesn’t, maybe the dog is not quite ready to follow the scent anywhere. Stick with squares a bit longer and try the track set up again in a couple of weeks.

Also, make sure that you always approach the triangle from different directions relative to the track.  Always bringing the dog to the triangle in a straight line behind the track will give the dog a clue that his nose is not giving him.  Always make sure he has to use his nose to find the track and where it goes.

I like to put a small handful of kibble in the last step to signify the end of the track for the dog.  I don’t make it too big of a jackpot, because I don’t want to dog to rush to it.  I want him to work along the track the small handful is really just to end the track.

I slowly lengthen the track from there on, while still continuing the same set up.

The better the dog gets at identifying the track and the more accurately he picks it up and works his way along from footstep to footstep, the less important the triangle becomes. I shrink that down until the track begins with a normal one foot by one-foot scent pad to begin the track.  However the separate square remains as a constant as a way to get the dog settled and to gauge the work attitude of the dog any given session.  The advice remains the same.  If the dog does not show good work and commitment in the square, he will most likely not have a good track.

Along with lengthening the track, we should also begin to slowly start to skip the occasional footstep with food.  So some of the steps have no food in them.  This goes hand in hand with skills improvement and track length.  We can’t lengthen the track if the skills are not to that level, nor can we leave food off footsteps if the dog has not shown that he can work at that level.

The colored dot concept

Once a dog has learned to follow the scent of disturbed ground cover in a specific direction and has made a clear connection between having success and following a previously meaningless odor, a big part of the tracking foundation has been laid.

From here on the work will be making the track longer, and eventually introducing turns.

Before we can get into that though, I want to explain a concept to you that I use to help people visualize a little bit how tracking works for the dog.

I call this my colored dot concept.  Let me be clear here, this is totally made up and only an aid to help people understand things a little better.

As you all know (if you don’t you should) dogs are macrosomatic animals.  Loosely translated that word means, large nasal cavity.  All animals that are categorized as macrosomatic are animals which use their sense of smell as the sense they trust in the most and through which they primarily perceive their environment.

As we all know things are not what they look like to our dogs, until they get to smell it first.

We have to understand then that our dogs use their noses in a similar way we use our eyes. They literally “see” with it.  So let’s talk about what they “see” when they are tracking.

Imagine that you could see what a dog can smell.  What would you see when you look at an individual footstep?  This is where the colored dot concept comes in.  Imagine for a moment that each footstep and the damage it does creates a picture made up of a set of 20 different colored dots.  Much like the color-blindness charts that an optometrist may show you.  The number 20 is of course completely arbitrary and serves a purpose only to illustrate the concept.

But imagine for a moment that each footprint contains 20 dots.  And each footstep contains the same 20.  You would be able to follow this visual track quite clearly.  Even if there were other footprints around that had a different set of 20 dots, you could very easily compare them and pick out which print is part of the track you are following and which one is different.  I imagine that a dog has that clear an image in his mind when he sniffs a footprint.

Let’s expand on this concept a bit further and use it to illustrate difficulties dogs have when they track.  Dogs who do not concentrate well and who have a bit of a superficial attitude about the whole thing may not take the time to clearly identify all 20 dots.

I have worked with many dogs who had their foundation training with very smelly bait.  These dogs seemingly track quite well, as long as the bait is there, because the bait for them represents a constant that is not found anywhere else.  But what often happens is, that by having the scent priority reversed, the dog never really identifies all 20 colored dots in the “track scent picture”.  So when the constant scent of the bait is removed, the dog is working on a pretty flimsy and sketchy idea of what a track “looks” like they may have a picture of only 5 dots.

And that often leads to problems until the dog is taught to properly identify and “see” the track (in other words all 20 dots).

Another common problem with any dog is the terrain change.  Even different grass length and having a different mix of plants on a field will create a slight change in the scent picture for the dog.  It may only be one or two dots out of 20 that are changing in the overall picture.  But there is definitely a difference for the dog.  Dogs who work by identifying all 20 dots will pause at the change, and then go with picture that resembles the original the closest. Dogs who work with much fewer dots, because they do not concentrate well, or because they do not take the time to identify all 20 dots before they head along a track will run into problems, because too large a percentage of the track scent picture has changed for them so that the changed track hardly resembles the original track at all.  It only stands to reason that a dog who is “looking” at a completely new “picture” will act confused and will not know exactly what to do next.

Corners are such scent picture changes that we lay for the dog.  We should know that we are making a change in the scent picture.  In other words we are adding colored dots or taking some away, or changing some of the colors.  One thing is for sure, the picture will not remain the same for the dog.

I often hear analogies about how a dog will run the same zig-zag pattern on a field that a rabbit ran, so corners mean nothing to a dog if the motivation is high enough.  WRONG!

When a dog follows a rabbit it always smells like rabbit.  Before the corner, on the corner and after the corner, it will always smell like rabbit to the dog, so the scent picture is always the same for the dog.

But when a dog follows the scent of crushed vegetation, the scent picture will change.  The different wind direction will affect the degree of fermentation that happens.  Plants face in different directions depending on where the sun is in the sky, and a different part of a plant will get damaged by a step, etc.  There are changes that a dog can and will notice.

And he should.  He should realize there is a change and work through the change with the skills we are teaching him.  What we have to realize is that some of the colored dots will change for the dog at a corner.  We have to allow him to acknowledge this change, and make a clear decision to follow the slightly changed scent picture and make that his new set of 20 dots to compare things against.

Dogs who work with fewer than all 20 dots will have greater difficulties to work out problems such as corners because the change in the scent picture will be much greater in their perception.

So keep that in mind as we go on.  Dogs can follow one or a few colored dots just as much as they can follow 20.  But the clearer and more accurate a picture the dog has of the track he is supposed to follow, the higher his likelihood of success.

Corners

As we stretch out the lengths of the tracks we present to the dog, we will inevitably encounter changes in conditions, drier grass, longer grass, shorter grass, more clover, less clover, sparser vegetation, different plant composition, etc.  All these changes in cover help a dog to adapt  to changes in his track.  When a change is very obvious and visible to us, we should use that as a teaching opportunity.  My approach is to not place food at any changes that are significant enough for a dog to register.  I have some food leading up to the change then no food while the dog is going through the change, then food again at increased frequency after the change.  What is the reasoning behind that?   I believe the dog has to acknowledge the change he is working through and should not be guided along with food reminders to a degree where he will not notice that anything has changed.  Changes in the scent picture are inevitable in tracking and we should prepare the dog for those changes by letting him learn that they happen and that he has the skills to work through them.

Corners are one such change that we set up deliberately for the dog.  How do we lay corners for teaching?  Naturally, there are different ways.  I will give you my way of laying corners for most dogs.

I “railroad” my corners.  That means I stop single step walking, and shuffle my feet along and around the corner without lifting my feet up off the ground.  I make as close to a 90 degree angle as possible and do not round the corner much at all. But I lay a continuous strip of slightly heavier ground damage for the dog to guide him around the bend.

I do not believe in double laying a corner, because as the tracklayer I will deposit an unusually concentrated pool of air scent around the corner (by moving his own body back and forth) that will only confuse the dog.

So, I stomp along laying my track.  Putting food in about every footstep until about a dog’s body length before the corner.  Then I stop with the food.  I railroad about 3 feet before and again 3 feet after the corner.  Then I resume stepping again by about the first or second step, I will also begin putting food again into every footstep.

Another point to make here is that I will base where I put my corner on the length of track the dog has done in straight lines.  Meaning if the dog has managed to work 80-100 pace tracks without any difficulties, I would put a corner near the 50-60 pace mark and then proceed for another 20 paces after the turn.

I want the dog to be well in the track and confident in his pursuit when he comes to the turn.  I want him to register the turn.  He will show a slight hesitation as he heads around the corner and onto the second leg.  A moment of doubt will occur.  This is all perfectly normal and understandable.  Aside from the colored dot concept that should help us understand that there is a scent picture change for the dog, we also have to realize that a dog also uses landmarks to guide himself along in his environment.  And as he makes a turn all landmarks, including where in relation to him his handler is, will change.

The dog will have his moment of doubt.  He should use his nose to guide himself forward, and right at the point where he says “this is not the same, but it is close”, he should be reinforced for his efforts by finding perfectly placed food right there.  He will get confirmation that he is in fact “on the right track” and continue from there with confidence.

Naturally, this has to be repeated many times and in both directions.  More difficult terrain conditions will make the issue larger.  Again, the harder it is for the dog to have a clear and accurate picture of a track, the harder hit he is by changes in that picture.  Be aware of what you are asking your dog to do when you lay a track.  It will let you be more fair and certainly more understanding to the troubles he may have.

Patience, patience, more patience

This concludes the bulk of foundation training in tracking.  The hard thing in this discipline is always that we are only guessing at what we are seeing.  When a dog sits, I know he sits.  But when he is tracking, many things are going on that are much beyond my understanding of what exactly occurs inside the dog’s brain when he is doing this “tracking thing”.  And that is why here more than in any other phase we have to be patient and if we ever make an error, let it be an error on the side of caution.  Because we can’t ever be 100% sure the dog is not doing what we hope he is doing.  Patience is the biggest virtue you can have in this discipline.  Going back a step is more common and more necessary here than in any other phase.  Take your time, stay on squares.  Go back to squares if you feel you went on too fast.  Stay away from turns unless your dog has shown he is ready and if he acts confused and bewildered take it as a sign that you went one step beyond his skills, not that he is defying you.  Up to this point tracking is totally up to our macrosomatic partner, because we don’t have a clue how to do what he is supposed to do.  A square will never hurt your dog.  It may not accomplish all you want it to, but it will surely never hurt.  And none of what I have described will cause any problems for you or your dog. So it is safe to do.  Naturally we are far from finished.  Up to this point all the work has been purely motivated by the dog’s inclination to do the work.  We have no sense of duty yet, except for whatever a dog may impose on himself to find food.  We have not addressed articles yet.  And we have not come close to doing all this without any food on the ground.  So, as you can see, there is more to do.  And more for me to write about.  Thanks for your time, until part 2.

I am pretty careful with tracking because I believe that we don’t ever know 100% what is going on in the dog.  So a lot of evaluation is necessary to see if a dog is ready for influences that can reduce drive.  I spend a lot of time studying the dogs to get a good read on whether they are tracking, comparing, solving a problem, or going off onto another scent.  It is absolutely crucial that we can tell that they are on another scent before we influence them.  Such an influence is not motivational, it is a negative influence, designed to kill the drive for the distraction, be they audible, visible, or olfactory.

Imagine you are playing ball with the dog, and the dog decides to stalk a bird instead.  You can just yell harsh and loud enough to have the dog come back and leave the bird alone, but also leave the ball.  But you can also influence the dog in a way that allows the stimulation from the ball to stay active, while the one from the bird is inhibited and the dog resumes the play for the ball.

The same kind of influence has to happen on the track, the desire to check out another dog, or follow a rabbit track or anything along that nature has to be interfered with so the dog continues to track the track we laid.

We have all seen this before, where the dog does toy obedience, but when we correct them for having their brain somewhere else, they don’t even want the toy anymore.  A balance has to be achieved, or the dog will lose attitude.  In tracking this is even more important because we do not show the dog the way, the nose does.

Sometimes a simple “Uh-Uh!” — “Such” may be enough and we see the dog stop checking a scent and resume tracking.  Sometimes they need a harsher influence like a correction or a louder verbal command.  Very often though it is necessary that we “platz” the dog and re-stimulate the drive to track before we say “Such” again.

We can do that by pointing, or pulling backwards slightly while saying the tracking command.  Or sometimes simply replaying a mini-version of the little ritual we perform before even putting the dog on a track.  I say something to the effect of “What are we gonna do now boy?” as I take him to the track.  I may use that to get the brain back on tracking.

“Pfui” or “No” are commands we all use to kill drive when our dogs follow a drive and do something very undesirable.  (Getting in the garbage, picking up garbage or dead things, etc)  To use a word like that we have to be absolutely sure they are engrossed in a new non-track related smell.  If they are struggling at a corner and are sort of trying to sort out the smells including the track smell to figure out where it continues and we holler “Pfui” at them, then there is a good chance that we correct them for working on the track and that we kill the drive they need to go on.

I use that word when I have a good feel that the dog understands what I want when I say “Such” and when I am sure that he is on another smell.  I am pretty much always sure when they are off the track, but in all honesty, the assessment of whether the dog truly has grasped what I want when I say “Such” is not always so accurate.  If I catch myself in such a situation, I have to accept my own mistake and go on from there.

Many dogs learn tracking by ritual and by set up (flag, harness, long line, boots, etc) and few do by command.  If you have a very good motivational tracker it can sneak up on you and you find yourself where the dog tracks so well you never really looked at whether they learned to do it on command.  But with dogs like that, when you say “Such” after you got on them for doing something like peeing on the track, you find yourself with your dog in the middle of the field and the dog not really mentally set up to track.  Say “Such” all you want.

We have all seen SchH 3 dogs who bark in the blind, but when in a platz in front of a helper who is not stimulating him that the dog does nothing when the word “Revier” is given.

Be sure your dog tracks on command, be sure that the dog is on another smell before you influence the dog, when in doubt do nothing but encourage the dog.  When you do influence the dog, be sure you can help the dog back to tracking.  And by that I do not mean showing the dog the track (although that may sometimes be helpful).  I mean to get their brain back to working with their nose for you.  If showing them the scent they have forgotten is necessary, do it.  If platzing them to re-stimulate their drive to track is necessary, do it.  If helping them to the next spot that makes any sense to them, like a piece of food, or an article is necessary, then do that.  And if you plain messed up and it went in the toilet for the day blame the one who did it (yourself) and go home.  Do it again another day and change what you did so it goes more your way next time.

Think of tracking like narcotics training.  Nobody uses force there.  Some discipline so the dog does not goof off, yes, but not force.  We depend on the dog’s nose to do the work and for that the dog has to want to do it.  Ditto for tracking.  Just because we make the dog walk with his head down does not make it tracking yet.

Only the NOSE really KNOWS;  Articles

Part 2

By Armin Winkler

Part 1 of this article was a discussion of the fundamental concepts of tracking and teaching tracking.  I’d like to focus part 2 on a crucial part of Schutzhund (or VPG) tracking, articles.  I believe that this is also one of the fundamentals.  After all, the description of the task in the trial rules calls Schutzhund tracking “tracking for lost articles”.  So we better make sure that our dogs have a good grasp of what they are.

Considering how varied the responses are I get from people about what articles should mean, I figure I will just give you my version of it and then go from there.  The article concept I will discuss is for dogs who indicate articles and do so by downing at the article.

First principle:  An article itself should have no meaning to a dog.  It is nothing more than a piece of material.  What should have meaning to the dog is the odor of human contact on that piece of material.  Tracking is as I have stated before nose work.  That means scent is what the dog is processing.  With the endless variety of materials a dog could possibly come across, it would be impossible to effectively teach them the smell of all these materials.  The human contact odor is one constant that will always be there and should therefore be the focus of our teaching.

I am deliberately using the broad term “human” contact odor, and not the “tracklayer’s” contact odor.  There are some very gifted dogs in this world who are actually capable of memorizing the odor of one human and comparing that against the odor of other humans.  Most dogs are not capable of doing that, they will however be able to identify and indicate objects which have had recent human contact.  For the purposes of  Schutzhund tracking and police evidence searches this is sufficient.

Second principle:  The scent of human contact on an object is an olfactory command to lie down.   Read that one a couple of times, it sounds very simple, but try to truly understand what I am trying to say.

The smell of human contact on an article a dog finds on a track is a platz command for the dog.  Which in this context takes the place of the audible (spoken) command.

I know this sounds a little weird.  Think of hand signals for a second though.  We can make a dog perform an obedience command by making him obey the verbal command and showing him a hand signal until the hand signal replaces the audible voice command.

So if the sense of hearing command can be replaced by another sense, the sense of sight, why can’t it also be replaced by the sense of smell?

I have had a technique to accomplish this for years, and it is still how I do it.  But two years ago on a seminar trip to New Zealand, I got together with some of the instructors at the Agriculture Detector Dog School there and had a great revelation.  The Agriculture Detection Dogs learn their work in a very unique way, which is in principle identical to how I teach articles to tracking dogs.  The “Beagle Brigade” of the New Zealand Department of Agriculture is world famous for their unbelievable ability to find and indicate all sorts of contraband.  From fruits to insect eggs and all you can imagine in between; a very important task in an island nation that tries to remain as disease and pest free as they are at present.

Let me tell you what they do, to give you some food for thought.  They begin their training with citrus fruits.  So how does a Beagle learn to indicate an orange by sitting for hot dogs?

Did you figure it out?  The dog is taught to sit as millions of dogs are in obedience classes using hot dogs as the food reward.  Then, the scent of an orange is introduced and this scent replaces the audible sit command.  And the highly food motivated Beagles that are selected for this work will not miss an opportunity to earn a hot dog.

For me that was a perfect illustration of what I have been trying to teach dogs to do when working articles.  The smell itself becomes a command to the dog.  Sounds simple, now that I figured it out.

So let’s define articles for a tracking dog once again:  Articles are obedience, but the command is scent.

So, now that we know what we want to teach let’s get into how we go about doing that.

Articles should not be introduced to a dog until the dog’s obedience has advanced to the must stage.  What does that mean?  A lot of people do puppy obedience, as they should.  However, most of that is purely inductive.  For the article concept to become a solid one, the dog has to have a reliable platz.  And I don’t mean that if you hold a hot dog in front of the dog’s face and say platz, he lies down really fast.  I mean that the dog lies down on command, reliably, even when he is in the middle of doing something else.  I believe to get that kind of platz, a dog requires some level of correction.  What type of correction may vary from a stern voice command to a physical correction with a training collar, but some form of it is necessary.   How the obedience exercise platz is taught to a dog varies greatly.  My point is that this exercise has to be proficient in the obedience context before it is introduced in tracking.  Puppies may track well at a young age, and articles may be the next step. But, they should not be introduced until the obedience has advanced to this stage.  If a dog does not yet obey a verbal command reliably, we cannot replace it with a “scent” command.

Since in the teaching of anything new, there may be conflicts and mistakes, we should introduce articles away from the track.   Then when the concept begins to take hold in the dog’s head, we bring it onto the track.  We need about a dozen articles (I like to use at least 4 or more different materials), a dozen fingernail size pieces of the oven dried liver I mentioned in Part 1, a flat collar, a corrective collar, and if possible a person to give us a hand.

Let me jump back to the “Beagle Brigade” for a moment to explain a teaching technique.  As I said, the dogs know the sit command, and then the scent of the orange is introduced.  How?   When a dog’s curiosity is triggered, they investigate with their nose.

The instructors put an orange into a cardboard box, and move it around.  The Beagle investigates the box sniffing it intensely.  They sniff the cracks and openings in the box.

After a period of this sniffing, the instructors can be assured that the dog has gotten a whiff of orange.  At that point they give the sit command.  When the dog sits, they reward him for sitting with a piece of food.  This process is repeated a number of times and a point will come when the dog sniffs the box and as he registers the smell of the orange inside, he sits on his own.  As if he had gotten the command to sit, because in his brain he did.  Classical conditioning is great isn’t it?  Thank you Prof.  Pavlov!

We will apply this very same concept with our article training.   We take our articles and we ensure that there is obvious human odor on them.  We do that by spitting on them and rubbing them with our hands and even against our arms.  The spit helps, because it already smells human, plus, it allows other scents from our hands to stick better and to be more detectable.  We then place them all over a field somewhere close enough together so we can find them, but far enough apart that the dog has to walk a few steps in between them.  We place a single fingernail size piece of liver under each article.  I use the liver, because I want to ensure that the dog will register the smell of the human contact odor on the article long before detecting the smell of the liver (that is why hot dogs or cheese is less desirable).

Next we put the dog on the flat collar and have the assistant person go to the first article.  The handler walks the dog up to the article, restraining him by the flat collar. The restraint helps to stimulate the dog’s curiosity.   The assistant points at the article, even taps on it getting the dog interested in it.  The handler allows the dog to stretch at it and sniff it.  After several strong sniffs, we can assume that the dog has registered the human odor we put on it.  At that moment the dog gets a firm platz command.  Don’t be ginger here, say it like you say it in obedience, with a bit of a bang to it.  The dog downs, the assistant flips the article over and the dog gets his food reward for platzing at the spot he did it at, the article.  Praise him “good boy”.  And on to the next article.  Same routine.

Restraint, tapping, sniffing, platz, reward.  Be sure to maintain the restraint part of the set up.  Handlers sometimes get a little rushed and let go of it too fast.  Hold the dog back a bit and control the situation.  You can do the same thing alone, without an assistant.  But you have to play both roles.  You have to hold the dog on the flat collar with one hand, then make him curious by pointing with the other.  It still works, but it is a little harder.

The corrective collar is there, in case the dog needs a reminder what platz means.  But as I said that should not be necessary more than once or twice.  By the time you get to the end of this batch of articles, you will see the dog starting to drop as he gets the smell of the article.  Of course there are other clues here too, that help, like the pointing and the sight of the article.  That is why I said maintain the restraint on the collar.  Make sure the dog has to wait and gets to sniff the article before he downs and is rewarded.  Sniffing is absolutely essential.

As nifty as this little exercise is, it has its limitations.  I rarely repeat this more than 2-3 times as a field exercise.  I do not want the dog to make other associations which are not intended.  The sight of the article, for example.  Also, ensure that you use different materials right from the beginning.  Dogs learn to lie down when they smell leather as easily as they do when they learn human contact scent.  We should ensure that we set it up so there is only one constant, the human contact odor.  If you do this right from the start, you don’t have to practice unconventional articles like metal or plastic or anything else the dog has not encountered before.  If it has human odor on it, it means platz in the context of tracking.

After our initial introduction of articles to the dog, we have to bring them onto the track.  During tracking the dog is truly working with his nose, and we make sure that the association with the articles will also be one of scent by bringing it into that context.   Depending on the tracking stage the dog is at, we place an article at the end of something that is easy for the dog.  What I described in Part 1 works great for some dogs, but there maybe some who do not advance very far with that method alone.  Some will not go significantly further until after the introduction of articles.  So what stage of competency in tracking a dog is at may vary.  A single article, with a piece of liver under it at the end of what our dog can competently handle.  We let the dog track as he always has, as he gets to the article we will see a reaction.  It will look like “Uh-oh, did I just hear a platz?”  You have seen that before – you tell your dog to platz a fair distance away, don’t say it very loud, he hears it, but isn’t quite sure you mean it.  So you get that kind of dropping of the shoulders.  That is pretty much what you will see on the track when he stumbles across the article.  It does register as a platz, but just not that strong.  Follow it up with a verbal platz as well to reinforce the replacement command.  Then let him get the reward.  Some dogs may flip the article over and reward themselves. For those that do not, you flip it over for them and let them have the treat under it.  Do this a few times the next few tracks and you will see the dog dropping and rewarding himself.

I hear questions.  “Isn’t the flipping going to be a problem later?”  It would be if it stayed.  But it won’t stay.  The reason this is important is the following.  The dog needs to be rewarded where he downs, no better way to do that than to have the food at the article.  You have to have the food covered up though and the smell of it too, or the dog can’t make the connection we want.  When we first teach the dog to down with food, we have it in our hands and give it to them as soon as they move into the down position.  But we soon get away from that and reward different and later and change how we reward. All this will take place at the articles too.  I will jump ahead here and say that as the dogs proficiency in indicating articles gets better and the reliability of the platz becomes very high, we stop putting food under the article.  The dog will flip the articles and find nothing,  we then bring the reward to them. In the beginning, the reward will continue to be in the form of food, or in later stages in the form of praising and petting. The dogs will stop flipping the articles because the expectation of food under it will no longer be maintained and supported.  I wanted to add this progression in here because I do not want people to turn off their brains because they worry about potential problems

We have now effectively taught and introduced articles and their indication to the dog.  But, we are not finished.  The platzing at articles is the first piece of must the dog has experienced on the track.  So far everything he did has been purely based on his own desires.  Naturally that is a bit of a shock to a dog.  If we go from the introduction of an article at the end of a track to placing them along the track right away, we will surely cause a problem.   An important concept needs to be added into all this and that concept is capping.   What is capping?  I have touched on this concept in my article “Protection Obedience  A Closer Look”.  And a detailed analysis of the concept is the topic of a future article.  But I will give you a sketch of it here.

Capping is the dog’s ability to follow the directions of his handler, in other words be obedient, and contain but maintain his drive while doing so.  Sounds a lot simpler than it is, especially when the drive of the dog is focused on something that is not coming directly from the handler.  The most important exercises of the sport of Schutzhund where capping is difficult but crucial are tracking, retrieving, the send out, and basically all protection obedience.

I can make a dog platz  fairly easily if I shut his drive to go forward down completely.  Often that is what happens when some of these exercises are taught.  The dog tracks nicely in drive.  Articles are introduced.  Bam!  Drive is gone.  The dogs do down at the articles, but if they have not learned to cap, their drive shuts down or diminishes to such a degree, that they will not go on tracking with the amount of drive they need to be successful.  This is equally true for all the exercises I mentioned above, but I am sticking to tracking in this article.

A dog has to learn that he can stay in drive while being obedient.  He does not automatically know that.  Often when the must parts of the work start being introduced, the dogs do not see a direct success outcome from following directions.  Their drive tells them something different.  So they resist.  The resistance stops usually when the drive has been lowered to a point where it no longer tells the dog to do something that is in opposition to what the handler’s direction says.  This happens when I tell my dog to platz as much as when anybody else does it with his dog.  Knowing that it happens makes the difference.  And then taking the time to make sure a dog can cap is what in the end makes the difference.

Do little exercises with your dog.  Make him lie down, put his toy in front of his feet, let him lie there for a bit and “stew” so to speak. Then give him the go ahead to grab the toy.  See the toy is not coming from you now,  it is right there in front of the dog.  He has to listen and stay in drive.  Or you will see that he is not as intense when he grabs the toy, or he can’t stand to look at it anymore, because he can’t stay down and be stimulated by the sight of the toy.  Work with this until you get good intensity and reliable downing.  Then tell the dog to sit from the down.  Most will bolt at the toy.  No punishment please. The dog is just not getting it yet, and his brain is so high on “toy” that he does not differentiate your words clearly.  Patience.

Make the dog sit before giving him his food, ask him to bark, then tell him to sit quiet again.  Reward when he follows your direction clearly.  Do not make it too complex in the beginning.  This is not easy for dogs.

Ask the dog to down and stop eating while eating his meal.  When he does, tell him to go back to eating.  Now please don’t bug the hell out of your dogs every time they eat.  And don’t turn into “nags” either.  All in good measure.

Work a dog on a square, tell him platz, then “such” again, gauge how fast and intense he goes back to work on the square.

The idea is that an obedience command does not have to shut down drive.  It will in the beginning, because it often takes influence from us to make the dog who is in drive obey our commands.  But if we show him that following direction does not mean the end of drive, it just means an interruption, then we are teaching capping.

Make sure you do these things with your dogs.  They will allow you to see if your dog can cap at least a little before you bring articles onto the track in places other than the end.  And if you have a dog who worked well within the parameters of what I said in part 1, then you can start placing articles on the track. In the beginning still with food under them.   You will see the down reaction, help them out with a command to ensure they down completely, walk up, reward, and let them continue the track from there.  Dogs who didn’t do so well with the food only method I described in Part 1, can still learn articles and learn to do them on simple tracks (for those dogs that may mean just straights, no corners).  You may even find as they learn to cap better, they will re-gather some of the food drive that seems to be dwindling as tracks get too long.  That will then allow you to stretch the tracks out a bit further.

Tracking training is by no means finished with the introduction of articles.  We still have to discuss dogs who need to be motivated through things other than food.  We have added a small potion of duty to the track by introducing articles.  But there is still more we need to do to put it all together so we can feel that we have a reliable dutiful tracking dog. I hope you will join me again when I try to shed a little light on those aspects of the work.