When training a dog for a real trailing dog to be utilized in the realm of search and rescue there have to be a definite understanding that you simply are NOT training for an A.K.C. title. Often the attainment of an A.K.C. title has nothing to do with following human scent nearly as often because it has to do with following the necessities that the handler sets up for the dog. Also, the motivation often is pieces of hot dog that are laid on the track by the one that “sets” or “lays” the track.
An individual training a dog for trailing must learn first the speculation of scent and skin rafts; that a human being will always drop skin cells and that these cells form a “raft” which can drift with the wind and fall to the bottom because the person moves. It is that this trail of skin cells, which the trailing dog have to be trained to follow. How and where the skin cells land on the encircling vegetation or surface will determine how and where the trailing dog will locate the scent. The length of time that the scent could also be picked up by the dog will rely upon the standard of the training and the natural abilities of the dog, together with the consequences of weather on the trail. The opposite requirement for successfully training a trailing dog is that the handler motivates the dog in order that he is not going to deviate from the trail under any circumstance.
An individual training a dog for a tracking title is just not concerned with the life and death scenario of a real search “mission” but fairly is worried with the attainment of a title, which might only be earned by following a prescribed “track” which has been laid in a particular manner for the dog. Training for this title often involves using hot dog pieces laid within the track of the human, thus encouraging the dog to follow the precise foot impressions on the bottom.
A one that is training a dog for certification as a “trailing dog” within the search and rescue area recognizes that the dog MUST be motivated to follow the trail of the rafts of skin to the source. The usage of food, if used in any respect, have to be limited to a reward after the trail is appropriately followed. The most important emphasis on training the trailing dog have to be certainly one of organising many many alternative scenarios and using many alternative “victims”, all of the while recognizing that the duty of the handler is to learn to acknowledge how the dog is reading the trail and to coach the dog to discover the trail appropriately through scent discrimination.
The very best motivation is certainly the strong desire to seek out a human and the old standby from the start for any such motivation is the “puppy runaway” which has been the idea for the training of search dogs for a lot of a few years. The difference between training an area wilderness search dog and a scent discrimination trailing dog is solely that the dog’s exposure to air scenting is restricted as much as possible during his early training. The human’s task is to learn to “read” the dog and likewise to find how the wind carries and distributes the skin cells and lastly but most significantly to motivate the dog throughout the training to need to follow the trail to its source.
