He will not allow the animal to proceed past the turn or go any farther until it negotiates the change of direction somewhat cleanly—either follow it as if it is on rails or stopping immediately when it overruns it and then searching carefully for the new leg.
Several attempts will probably be required, but eventually the dog will negotiate the turn correctly. The handler must be careful to praise it for any loss-of-track indication and to enthusiastically pet it when it discovers the bait after the turn.
The dog should do better on its second and third turns that day, and within a few weeks it will probably be making most of its turns cleanly. At this point the handler begins laying only one track per day, with two to three turns, instead of three tracks.
The handler must be careful not to give the turns away to the dog with any action or word on his part as he approaches them with the animal, or by too obviously staking or marking them when he lays the track. Also, he should vary the lengths of the tracks and the lengths of the legs so that the dog cannot ever predict where the next turn will be. This will keep the animal turning when its nose tells it to rather than when it thinks it is time.
GOAL 3: The dog will indicate the articles on the track by lying down upon them.
In Schutzhund I and II, the tracklayer leaves two articles on the track. In Schutzhund III there are three, which account for twenty-one of the 100 total points available in the tracking phase. It is therefore imperative that the dog locate all three articles and indicate them cleanly. If the dog is a good, exact worker, the articles seldom pose any problems for it. As it proceeds down the track, footstep by footstep, it will run directly into them.
If the animal is not a precise tracker, it is even more important to motivate it for the articles, so that it is eager to find them. Then, if it is far off the footsteps when it nears an article, the article’s presence and the scent cone it gives off downwind may bring the dog back to the track. Therefore, the articles in Schutzhund tracking are somewhat of a blessing rather than a training problem. They often make a difficult Schutzhund III track easier, because if the handler can depend upon his dog to find the articles, then it has three places in the field where it knows without a doubt the tracklayer has been. The articles can thus serve as vitally important reference points.
The dog is free to indicate the article in any one of three ways—sitting, downing or standing on it—or it may even pick the article up and retrieve it to its handler. The only stipulation is that it must indicate all the articles in the same way. However, it is almost universally agreed that the best method is to teach the dog to lie down upon the article, and it is therefore quite rare to see a dog in competition that has been trained to do otherwise.
The skill of finding the articles is quite different than tracking. It is perhaps more similar to a scent discrimination exercise, because the dog frequently comes upon objects while tracking that might be articles, and it must then determine whether or not they have been touched by the tracklayer. It is therefore possible to teach the articles as a separate exercise from tracking proper. Indeed, it is even desirable to do so, because we will employ compulsion with the articles in order to make the dog absolutely reliable.
Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal
1. Lying down upon the articles
2. Indicating the articles on the track
3. Restarting the dog after an article
Because we will use compulsion in association with the articles, we do not introduce them on the tracking field. Instead, we introduce them as an obedience exercise, and we often simply do it at home in the backyard.
The handler downs his dog and leaves it. He walks out a few yards in front of the animal and scatters about on the ground several leather articles that he has impregnated with his scent by carrying them inside his shirt or clamped under his arm for a minute or two.
He returns to his dog and takes it on leash to each of the articles in turn. He points each one out with his hand, so that the dog smells it, and then he commands the dog to “Down!” Once the dog is down, the handler kneels with it and, picking up the article, he makes a great production of showing it to the animal and praising it in association with the article. At the same time he slips a bait from his pocket and feeds it to the dog.
Over a period of several weeks the handler does this again and again, walking the dog up to an article impregnated with his scent, downing the dog upon it and then feeding and praising the animal. His goal is to associate finding the article with food and praise.
It might seem far simpler to use a leather object such as a glove, and place the bait inside the glove. This method will certainly have the dog eagerly searching for articles and downing on them in short order. However, by doing so, we can create two training problems.
First, the dog does not learn to find and indicate an object impregnated with the handler’s scent. It is simply searching for food, as it has done during much of its early tracking training. This means that at some later date the handler may have trouble getting it to search out the kinds of articles that are used in Schutzhund III competition, which are flat and small and definitely do not smell of food. The dog may eventually overrun an article or two at an unanticipated and inconvenient time (that is, on a very difficult track during which it has done everything right, except the articles), and the handler will be forced to correct the dog for it.
Second, when a dog is taught to indicate articles by using gloves containing food, it invariably mouths and chews at them. This often results in the habit of mouthing the articles. If the dog is an extremely proficient tracker, scoring in the high nineties, his scores will be hurt by mouthing, especially in major trials where the judging is severe.
After several training sessions, the dog will automatically and happily lie down when it finds an article. However, at this stage the handler must ensure that the dog also feels a sense of obligation where the articles are concerned. Therefore he begins to pressure the animal a little bit, perhaps even slapping it on the back with the leash if it does not down quickly enough (we assume that we are dealing with an adult dog that already knows basic obedience). It is far better to get the issue of the down settled here in the backyard, rather than be forced to correct the dog later in the midst of an actual track because it is reluctant to lie down on an article.
Once the dog is down on the article, the handler spends thirty seconds or a minute with it, praising it softly and feeding it, so that the articles come to represent for him a haven from stress, a place to relax. The handler also practices picking the article up, holding it above his head as though he were showing it to the judge in a trial, walking around the dog, adjusting its collar and so forth while still keeping the animal down.