For this reason, it is often useful to keep a tracking journal. The handler records in it the conditions, length, age and general difficulty of the track, and then also records exactly how the dog negotiated it. By looking back through his journal the handler can take note of trends and important changes in performance, and also identify specific problems he might not otherwise notice. For example, the journal might reveal that the dog has difficulty with tracks over thirty minutes old in temperatures above 75°F, or that whenever it is on a particular medication its performance drops markedly.
GOAL 2: The tracklayer must lay well-designed tracks and then remember exactly where they lead.
In much of the training, the handler acts as his own tracklayer. Later on, in the advanced stages of training, the tracklayer will be a training partner who lays mystery tracks so that the handler can practice relying upon and trusting his dog.
The tracklayer has much responsibility for the success of a dog-handler team in both training and in competition. He must be able to lay all sorts of imaginative and ingenious tracks for training, exploiting natural features and vegetation to educate the dog. He must also be able to lay a series of regular and consistent regulation Schutzhund trial tracks.
When track markers are not used, he must be able to map out and/or remember exactly where the track leads. This way the handler training his dog knows when he can say “Good dog!” and when he must say “Phooey!” And in trial the judge also must be able to depend upon the tracklayer to correctly answer the question, “There, where the dog is going now, did you walk right there or not?”
In Schutzhund I competition, in which the handler lays his own track, he can obviously be of immense help to his dog if he has the knack of remembering exactly where he has walked.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Laying straight tracks
2. Laying a clean track
3. Mapping and remembering tracks
4. Laying regulation tracks
It is only when we begin teaching a dog to track that we realize how difficult it is to walk in a perfectly straight line without sidewalks, fences or roads to guide us. In order to do so, the tracklayer must pick out not just one landmark toward which he will walk, but two. These objects should be noteworthy and memorable and separated by as great a distance as possible—a tree near the end of the track and a bam in the distance, for example. The tracklayer lines them up with each other somewhat like the sights of a rifle and then, as he walks, he keeps them in the same relation to each other. He will know he is beginning to curve when one of the objects begins to change position relative to the other.
The importance of perfectly straight legs to the overall track is that, if we have two flags marking each end of a leg, and if the tracklayer traveled a perfectly straight line between them, then we always know exactly where to find his footsteps. If, on the other hand, he curved as he walked, we can be wrong by as much as six or seven yards on a long leg.
The tracklayer must take great care that he leaves behind him a well-defined and uncontaminated path of track scent for the dog to follow. For this reason, he makes a “jump start”—leaping to the place where he will make the scent pad so that the track leads only away from it. By the same token, when he has finished laying the track, he should leap away from it. This way the track will finish cleanly at a dead end, with nowhere else to go, so that a dog who tracks very precisely is not confused by being stopped when the track has not yet ended.
When he walks back around to the starting pad from the end of a track he has just laid, the tracklayer should walk well clear of his track, and also downwind of it if at all possible, so that the dog will not be confused by scent blowing to it from upwind. The tracklayer must keep in mind that he lays a track coming back as well as going out, and take care not to contaminate the training track he has just taken such trouble to prepare.
It goes without saying that no one should cross or “cut” the track before the dog works it, and also that it is best that the piece of ground used for training be empty of all traffic for twenty-four hours beforehand, or even longer in lush or wet conditions.
Before he even begins to lay a track, the tracklayer surveys the ground available to him and, keeping the dog’s ability and stage of training in mind, he picks landmarks and sketches out in his mind the path he will walk. He does not simply begin to lay the track and hope to find landmarks along the way at about the right places and the right distances for the dog’s ability. Instead, he plans his legs and turns in advance so that they will be recognizable and distinct and conform to the dog’s level of expertise.
As he walks the track, he may or may not mark his path with tracking stakes or flags, depending upon the length and difficulty of the track and also the availability of landmarks. It is always best to use as few flags as possible, because the dog soon learns their significance and uses them to help it navigate instead of relying entirely upon its nose. For the same reason, the tracklayer should be a little subtle in his use of flags. For example, rather than marking all his turns with one flag right at the apex of the turn, he should instead use two. He places one well before the turn, and one well after, with a small clump of grass or an anthill marking the exact location of the turn itself. Otherwise the dog will soon begin to make a turn anytime it encounters a flag.
Color-coded clothespins or pieces of ribbon can also be used to mark the track by clipping or hanging them in the vegetation, but only if the vegetation is well up off the ground. Because these markers are impregnated with the tracklayer’s scent they are essentially articles, and if they are merely dropped on the ground or hung in the grass, a well-trained dog should indicate every one of them.
As he walks the track the tracklayer should make mental notes and rehearse the track over and over in his mind. He should be able, before he starts his dog, to close his eyes and summon up a mental picture of every turn and leg of the track and the landmarks and flags that mark them. It is helpful for the tracklayer to sketch a quick map of the track once he is finished laying it, especially if the track must age for an hour or so before the dog will begin to work it.
It is also advantageous to occasionally lay tracks in soft dirt, heavy dew or light snow so that every footstep is visible to the handler as he handles his dog down the track. This kind of track is our best opportunity to run proofing problems in which we ask the dog to negotiate extremely demanding bends and curves and even spirals.
Laying the track itself is at least half the work of teaching the dog to track.
In trial, a stake is used to indicate the beginning of the track. To the right of the stake the tracklayer makes a scent pad by trampling the ground in an area approximately one yard square. He then proceeds to lay the first leg of the track in a straight line. When he reaches the location of the first turn, he pivots 90 degrees right or left (according to the judge’s instructions) and proceeds without hesitation in the new direction. The tracklayer should walk the track at a normal pace and with his normal step. He is very careful to drop the articles directly onto the track. In a trial, the judge normally indicates where he wants the articles dropped and where the turns are to be.