This guide will help you teach any dog the basics of tracking, air scenting, or how to have fun finding objects.

• Five games to prepare your dog for scent work
• Planning training sessions that promote progress

AUTHOR’S BIO

Lue Button is a long-time trainer with a special interest in all forms of scent work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.            A Trained Scent Dog Is A Joy Forever

II.           We’re Both In This Together

III.         Getting Off On The Right Foot

IV.          Where Did That Scent Go?

V.           I Need To Know Too

VI.          We Can’t Lose If We Keep Trying

VII.        Lesson Plans

TRACKING AND TRAILING

AIR SCENT

EVIDENCE SEARCH

DISASTER SEARCH AND AGILITY -.

AKC TRACKING

VIII.       Bibliography

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

TRAINED SCENT DOG IS A JOY FOREVER

Margaret had dropped her keys, somewhere in the snow-covered parking lot. She was numb with cold, pushing the heavy supermarket cart, and her purse, swinging from her shoulder, had fallen open. But a cheerful “yip” from the front seat told her that help was waiting. Margaret banked the cart wheels with snow, reached inside, and snapped the lead on Trinket, her little terrier. “Go find!” she said, pointing to the ground. Trinket Scurried over the ruts, backtracking the rapidly filling footprints. Down the line of cars, across the entrance drive, up the curb--and then a sudden turnabout. The little paws scraped madly, sending up a shower of snow. The nose dropped, the mouth darted in, and the dog pranced back to Margaret to deposit the missing keys proudly in her hand.

Jim groped frantically in the grass. His glasses must be here! He remembered laying them on a rock just before he drank from the stream. As it was, Jim’s son-in-law kept reminding him how much they had cost. And Jim was almost blind without them. A cold nose touched his cheek. Of course! Jenny! He scented her on the empty case from his pocket. A rush of eager feet, a splash, a joyful yelp, and the glasses were pressed into his hand. He put them on carefully and looked around. Not even the mountain peaks seemed familiar. But that was no problem. He patted the smooth head. “Find the car, Jenny,” he said. “Take me to the car.”

Phyllis was changing the baby, again. She was tired, oh, so tired. And two-year-old Allison was playing happily on the grass in front of the summer cabin. Or was she? Phyllis snapped alert. The clearing was empty. The surrounding woods were still. Phyllis called to Buck where he lay on the porch. “Find her, Buck. Find Allie.” The dog shook himself awake, circled nose-down where the child had dropped her doll, then lined out through the trees. Phyllis stumbled after him, clutching the baby in her arms. On and on, over hill and through thickets; she could hear Buck moving in the brush. Then the sound stopped. She burst out onto the shoulder of the highway--to see Buck holding Allie’s jacket firmly in his teeth, dragging her back from the road.

These were ordinary people, and their dogs were ordinary dogs. The tact that the dogs were trained to use scenting skills for their owners made the difference between inconvenience or possible tragedy and a happy outcome, They took up scent training casually, with no thought of ever having to use it. Margaret entered Trinket in a tracking class just because she wanted to continue working with her dog after basic obedience. Jim had thought his grandson should have a dog, but when everyone else was at school or work, the two of them had to do something together. Phyllis rescued Buck from the pound and trained him from a book she’d found in the college library because she thought it would be “neat” to have a scent dog; shed forgotten all about it in the four years since she graduated and got married.

At the other extreme are the professionals: the police bloodhound handlers, the ski patrollers with their avalanche dogs, the many search and rescue (SAR) teams throughout the country. Scenting dogs are used to detect smuggled drugs, to find weapons in school children’s lockers, to locate breaks in gas lines, and even to prospect for valuable metal deposits. These are the applications that make headlines, leading people to believe there is some mystique about scent training. It must be very difficult.

Not so! Scent work is the easiest form of dog training. Because it is usually done (or at least begun) on lead, you can do it anyvhere, even in the heart of the city. You can do it from a wheelchair in your apartment. You can do it by yourself or with friends. All you need to get started is a dog, a harness, and an open mind. The rewards are great. No activity builds a closer understanding between dog and man, or a stronger mutual respect. Almost every dog loves scent work, whether because he is getting a chance to do what he’s best at or because his beloved person is giving him total attention, only the dogs can tell. For the handler, there is the intellectual excitement of watching a skill unfold, the pride of seeing your own dog accomplish unbelievable things. And you will feel more secure knowing that, in emergencies, help is always at your side.

How easy is it? Many dogs start doing scent work on their own, with no training at all. Twenty years ago, my first Weimaraner tumbled to the fact that I needed two things to leave for work--my car keys and my security badge. Because he never wanted me to go to work, he would steal my badge or keyring and bury it in the garden.

I also was keeping a young puppy, Duke, for a friend. Duke was very devoted to me and got worded if I was distressed. The first time may have been an accident, but one morning while I was scolding Rudi, Duke all on his own dug up my keys and brought them to me. The praise I gave him that morning was all the training he ever had; from that day, I would say, “Find my keys,” or ‘Find my badge, and Duke would do it, snuffling through the flowerbeds until he found where Rudi had dug. At the time I had no idea of training

a dog to scent. I was just happy to find things I needed promptly

Years later my confidence in this naive approach was confirmed when I read (Davis, p. 87) “Bear in mind that you are not teaching the dog to track. You are training him to follow a specific trail* on your command....” That is the key to all scent work. You don’t teach the dog to do it; you teach him to do it for you. Every puppy starts using his nose before his eyes open, to find his milk and the life-giving warmth generated by his mother. He sniffs his way through the mass of littermates to the food dish when weaning begins. On his first ventures outside, he scents where his mother and siblings have gone when he falls behind, and can even backtrack himself to your door. If you let him out after taking his brother for a walk, he will follow your tracks to learn what you did with that other dog. The only dog that does not scent (barring a physical handicap) is one raised to believe his nose was useless or always got him in trouble; in other words, he was taught not to.

Is it hard to get the dog to work on command? Sometimes. It depends on the dogs inborn temperament, his previous experience and your attitude. We must remember, however that dogs have made their living for thousands of years by pleasing their humans and that dogs are pack animals whose natural behavior is to work with a leader they respect. Most dogs happily do what you want, if you can show them what that is and convince them its worth doing.

Scent work leans heavily on mutual respect. If you cannot face the fad that this “dumb animal” has a sense several million times more acute than yours and knows instinctively more about using it than you will ever learn, you may find this training frustrating rather than enjoyable. Worse, a dominant dog will rebel against being restrained from using his, best judgment and a submissive dog will be spoiled for practical work because he will look to you rather than use his nose. But before you abandon the idea of scent training, scan Chapter II and judge if a dog you can depend on is not more appealing than one that depends wholly on you.

How do you know what your dog is doing—whether he is scenting at all? By watching him. Every dog has its own body language, its individual way of working, its unique manner of communicating. By close observation, you can learn your dogs language. You will not only understand what your dog is doing but how he feels about it: whether he is sure of the trail or questing hopefully, and what conditions the trail has undergone since your subject passed this way. Your dog will have different signs for a passing rabbit track, a casual picnicker crossing the trail, or the presence of danger, and he will show increasing urgency if the subject is ill or injured. No book, including this one, can tell you how to ‘read” your dog; it can only suggest some common signs and how they appear in different types of dog.

Can all dogs do scent work, whether purebred or crossbred? Definitely. All dogs have a scent capability far surpassing a humans; temperament rather than pedigree is most likely to affect success. The Bloodhound and some of the sporting dogs have been bred for scent wotl over many years, so these dogs may in general prove more talented, but every dog has enough ability to be worth training. A young puppy is probably the easiest to start; but the older dog that already has scent experience under various conditions may develop a finished skill faster. A dominant dog should not be avoided; although possibly harder to train, such a dog may have more endurance when conditions get rough, more determination to follow the trail to the end, and more imagination in pursuit of the goal. A submissive dog can succeed, but he must be carefully trained for independence and confidence.

Is extensive reading a good idea? Shouldn’t the various theories be studied? It is probably better to do your reading after you train your first scent dog. The references listed in the Bibliography contain much interesting material, but any theory which is directly controverted by something you have seen your own dog do should be accepted guardedly, if at all. For example, you will read that all individual human scent is gone after two hours--yet your dog is confused in practice by a conflicting trail the same tracklayer made the previous week and not by tracks of a strange hiker who crossed the trail that morning. When experience contradicts theory, go with experience.

Studying others’ experiments, watch out for conclusions that may be artifacts of the dogs’ previous training. For example, we read that dogs coming perpendicularly onto a track are apt to turn right consistently or left consistently regardless of which way the tracklayer had gone--does this mean the dogs cannot distinguish track direction, or were the first tracks they ran double- and triple-laid, back and forth over the same path, so that the dogs learned the direction of the track was not significant? When you start setting up your own experiments, beware of similar pitfalls.

Remember that many well-trained dogs have been produced by people who never read a book; they relied on their own common sense. In the long run, that is what you must do. Cultivate your powers of observation, then watch your dog. Try to understand everything your dog did (it’s not always easy) and don’t forget to consider possible alternate explanations. Then go confidently forward. Keep your training lively, keep it spontaneous. Don’t bore your dog or yourself. Above all, have fun.