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Tracking training (Read 222 times)

Jovial Monk

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Dogs not cats!

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Tracking training
Jun 27^th, 2020 at 9:22am

Need some level of obedience skills.

Tracking is the dog following the path someone has taken — like an escaped convict, like someone lost in the bush.

In the past some of the top dog and handler amateur tracking teams were enlisted by the Emergency Services but not really any longer. It is a great sport tho!

The lead used is ten metres long—dog needs room. Because of that the dog needs to wear a harness to which the very long tracking lead is clipped—dog would choke if this lead was clipped onto its collar!

What do we need to practice tracking? An area where practically nobody goes so as not to have thousands of crisscrossing tracks. Our club used the Sturt River Gorge, the deeper, wilder parts for practice, the land around the Mannum-Adelaide water pipe for exams.

Oops have to go. Continue this later. Will just add: need to be fit for this! Climb in and out of creek beds, over fallen trees, keeping and eye out for hare/wombat holes, break a leg in those!

Get the vaxx! 💉💉

If you don’t like abortions ignore them like you do school shootings.

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Jovial Monk

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Re: Tracking training
Reply #1 - Jun 27^th, 2020 at 1:54pm

The further you get in tracking the longer and more complex the track the dog has to sniff out. Starts of as a simple rectangltime about 100m by 50m. Demi aced that!

Sometimes the dog overshoots where the track turns: you train the dog but the handler needs to learn ringcraft, craft different in trials for obedience, agility and tracking! Basically if the dog is casting around, obviously having lost the scent it is up to the handler to get his dog to go back—you are BOTH on trial—to where it last had a clear scent in its nose. Had to do that once in the one tracking trial Demi aced.

In a practice someone gasped at the right-turn-on-a-sixpenny-piece Demi executed following a track!

At higher levels “articles” or bits of clothing etc the track layer made sure to have on their person for a while, get his or her scent on them are left on the track. The dog has to nose them “indicating the article.”

The increasing pain of arthritis meant I had to drop out of tracking. Pity. New dog tho—will try out for tracking again!

Get the vaxx! 💉💉

If you don’t like abortions ignore them like you do school shootings.

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Jovial Monk

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Dogs not cats!

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Re: Tracking training
Reply #2 - Jun 28^th, 2020 at 8:43am

In training the person laying down the track puts posts with flags on them, help the handler keep the dog on the track.

The track would be laid down and allowed to “mature” for half an hour or so. I guess molecules of scent would build up in the air.

Dogs have millions of scent detectors in their noses! They can sense smell 10,000–100,000 times better than we can. They can even detect heat. (By contrast, dogs have very few taste buds. This makes sense in the wild—find food by smell, gobble it down before some bigger animal steals it. I would look at Demi chewing a chicken neck sometimes and faceteously tell her “Remember to chew 30 times!” ahahahahah.)

In the more advanced classes a second person lays down a “diversion track” that crosses the real track. Few dogs are ever fooled by the false trail.

Get the vaxx! 💉💉

If you don’t like abortions ignore them like you do school shootings.

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