PoliceLink

Anyone with questions please feel free to ask or answer any question.

Toy drive is awesome! How long/often have you been working Moose? Try giving the reward to the victim/subject and do what I call "Fire Trails". They are just like puppy runs when you first start training puppies to track. The difference is the speed that the trail is over. It seems that he is no longer associating the victim/subject with the reward. If his normal reward is a ball and he is a bite dog let the subject give him the ball after the release to get that association back into his mind. He needs to know he doesn't get a reward until he does the whole job. Also, because I haven't worked with you so I don't know if you do this or not, I just want to make sure he doesn't get his toy at any other time when he hasn't worked for it. (ie. training, real life searches)

I trail two certified K-9's. My Bloodhound Ellie Mae is certified in trailing only and my Malinois Ranger is certified in trailing and training for HRD detection. I also instruct trailing/land navigation classes for my search group.

1K950 says ...

K9EMR01 - I am not familiar with scent discriminate tracking. Can you explain? Are there any books you could recommend? I don't know if I mentioned but I am the only handler for my PD. I raised the funds through grants and donations. MY PD is very supportive of us but can't help me much as they have no idea what we do.....Thanks for the invite to the group!!!!

What I mean by scent discriminate is that the K-9 is trained to follow only scent that is presented to them. For example, you have a subject that bails out of a car after a pursuit. As he is running into the woods his hat falls off and lands on the ground. Now this being evidence it is collected and preserved. Now you arrive on scene with your K-9 and instead of starting at the point last seen and HOPING the the K-9 picks up the trail, you take the hat that is bagged and you tell your K-9 the you want him to follow this scent and not the scent of the other officers that have been running and standing around the area. 

Just like any other job you want the K-9 to do you must have a command that the K-9 must follow. When I track/trail with my K-9's I put the scent under their nose and when the see it and smell/taste it I will say "Mark". This lets the K-9 know that is the scent I want them to follow. I then give my track/trail command of "Search" and the K-9 starts looking for that scent and disregards all the other human scents. This is also used in courts during what is called a "Scent Line-up". It is like a line-up for humans but instead of picking out the subject with the K-9's eyes it is using it's nose. I hope that helps. 

hafahndlr says ...

Moose doesn't get any rewards until we are done. We always let the dog win also. Even if he has a hard time. I cannot believe how hard it is to recognize the tell tale signs they have that are ever changing too. His signs are not consistent, so it is even harder.

The only way to figure that out is to do more tracks, more often. And then one day it will just "click". Then you will be able to read him like a book.

hafahndlr says ...

Moose doesn't get any rewards until we are done. We always let the dog win also. Even if he has a hard time. I cannot believe how hard it is to recognize the tell tale signs they have that are ever changing too. His signs are not consistent, so it is even harder.

How are yall doing? Is Moose tracking any? I know you had some motivation issues with him. How is that coming? Keep in touch.

1K950 says ...

K9EMR01 - I am not familiar with scent discriminate tracking. Can you explain? Are there any books you could recommend? I don't know if I mentioned but I am the only handler for my PD. I raised the funds through grants and donations. MY PD is very supportive of us but can't help me much as they have no idea what we do.....Thanks for the invite to the group!!!!

To be a true "scent discriminate" track look at this way. You have a scent article from a person you are tracking. the dog takes you to a house. Inside the house are 10 people. The dog by discriminating, can tell you which of the 10 is the one you were tracking. Most police tracks are not conducted in such a manner. Scent discrimination is nothing more than being able to chose one of many. Same principle for a drug or an explosives detector. Of all the scents that are available during a search, the only ones the dog attends to, are the ones they are trained to detect.

If you dog is toy driven, use the toy at the end of the track. Probably the biggest mistake novice trackers make, when training a dog is going too much distance, too soon. There are two main concerns when tracking, time (age of the track) and distance (length of the track) both need to be addressed, but address them individually and never more than the dog has already learned. That only leads to frustration, which I'm sure you know is counter-productive.