Schutzhund: Theory and Training Methods

The primary GOAL in Schutzhund tracking is to teach the dog to footstep track. Only a dog that puts its nose into each footstep and works carefully and determinedly can receive the full 100 points in competition. Accordingly, we must teach the dog to follow track scent, not air or body scent. We do this by associating the tracklayer’s footsteps, and thus the track scent, with small bits of food.

GOAL 1: The dog will work a short, straight track slowly and precisely.

The first step is to teach the dog to follow a straight track. We break this skill down into a number of simple concepts.

The vast majority of Schutzhund dogs begin their schooling in tracking when they are still very young, at perhaps ten to twelve weeks, and therefore much of the following information is described in terms of puppy training. However, the reader should be aware that we use almost exactly the same techniques to begin older pups and adult animals in tracking.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Searching on command

2. Taking a full scent at the start of the track

3. Taking scent in each footstep of the track

4. Correcting the dog back to the track

The first lesson in tracking can be taught at home, first inside the house and then later in the yard. The handler will need five or six small pieces of the puppy’s favorite treat (cheddar cheese and small slices of hot dog are usually well received). While the puppy watches (normally an assistant holds the puppy for the handler), the handler distributes the bait randomly throughout a small area perhaps eighteen inches across. He has his assistant release the puppy and, with a gentle but enthusiastic “Seek!” command, points the tidbits out to the animal, encouraging it to find them and gobble them up. The handler repeats this procedure perhaps three times each training session.

Once the puppy makes an association between the “Seek!” command and food, so that it drops its head and begins to search avidly upon hearing it and seeing its handler point to the ground, we make the game more difficult by moving it out into the yard. We pick an area with short but dense grass, so that the tidbits will not be visible and the puppy will have to search them out by sniffing among the blades of grass.

Once the puppy is eagerly snuffling out every one of the baits, we begin to increase the size of the search area where they are hidden, giving the pup more ground to cover and teaching it to be very persistent in searching out food. The handler ensures that the pup finds every one of the baits by directing it across the entire search area with his hand and the command “Seek! Seek!”

Each time the youngster finds a piece of food, its handler reinforces it with soothing praise words and gentle petting.

The impact of the start of a track cannot be overstated. Very often, the way that the Schutzhund dog starts will be typical of its entire performance. If the dog starts slowly, surely and with intense concentration, we can usually be assured that we are about to witness a fine track. On the other hand, if it rushes away from the starting pad without really taking the scent, or if it does not show strong motivation and drive by searching the scent pad eagerly, we can conclude that the dog will be lucky to finish its track.

After a week or two of careful work at home, our puppy has a clear understanding that “Seek!” means that if it drops its head and scours the area indicated to it, it will be rewarded. Searching a scent pad is only a minor extension of something that it already does enthusiastically.

While the pup watches from a crate or from the arms of an assistant who restrains it, the handler stamps out a scent pad on the tracking field about one yard square. He puts in a tracking flag or stake at arm’s length to the left of it, and scatters five or six small baits across it. As he “kicks in” the scent pad the handler talks to his puppy, encouraging and teasing the pup in order to excite it. Then, when all is ready, he returns to his puppy and walks it on leash to the scent pad, commands it to “Seek!” and directs it across the pad with his hand. While the pup searches out and eats the tidbits, the handler praises and pets it calmly.

The handler repeats this drill three or four times for several training sessions, at the same time gradually reducing the number of baits on the pad until finally there are only three, placed at the comers of a triangular scent pad. During this stage of training, the puppy makes the additional and useful association that it will be rewarded by searching to the right of a tracking flag.

Once the puppy thoroughly scours a scent pad on command, we are ready for the handler to proceed to tracking proper.

All the initial training, up to and including turns and articles, is done in optimal conditions. The tracks are laid on flat ground in evenly distributed grass that is about instep high (ankle high at most). The handler does not age the tracks any longer than it takes him to prepare them and then ready his dog for the start, nor does the handler work his novice tracking dog in very windy or inclement weather.

After laying a triangular scent pad with food in each comer, the handler departs from the apex of the triangle and slowly, with very small steps, walks perhaps ten or twelve feet. As he goes, he leaves a small bait in the middle of each footstep, and at the end of the short track he also places a food drop—a pile consisting of a handful of the bait.

Then he goes back to his puppy, walks the pup up to the scent pad and commands the pup to “Seek!” as before. The handler uses a finger to direct the puppy over the entire scent pad and then, before the pup lifts its head, out onto the first footstep of the track. Slowly and carefully, he walks the youngster down the length of the short track. He holds a very short leash to keep the puppy right on top of the footsteps and also to prevent it from rushing down the track. Gently, he holds the young dog to a slow, steady pace. He walks bent over beside the pup, running his finger along in the grass directly in front of the youngster’s nose, so that the pup works the track all the way to the end without ever lifting its head. When the animal reaches the food drop and begins to eat, the handler praises it enthusiastically.

Meanwhile, the assistant comes forward and takes hold of the pup; when the puppy looks up from eating the last of its food drop, it finds the handler already laying another short track a few feet away. The handler runs the puppy through three tracks like this in a row, and then plays with the puppy for a while on the field afterward. It is very important that the young dog understand that the end of the track means play and “quality time” with its master.

Assuming that it is tracking four or five times per week, the puppy continues working at this short distance for perhaps two weeks. Of course, each dog learns at its own rate. What is most important is that the pup completely master the scent pad and the short track before proceeding.

At this point the handler begins to increase the length of the tracks. He also begins to walk more and more normally as he lays the tracks, so that now his footsteps are separated by the usual distance rather than lying heel to toe. He increases the length of the track very gradually, and he still leaves a bait in every footstep. Only when the youngster works a fifty-foot track continuously and with intense concentration does the handler begin to reduce the number of food drops.

Up to this point in training, the young dog has probably taken little notice of either the track scent or the air scent left wafting about in the breeze by the tracklayer. Instead it has been single-mindedly preoccupied with sniffing for and finding the food scent. Now we must teach it that, although the food will no longer be distributed evenly all along the track, the key to getting from one bait to the next is following the track scent.

At first, when the handler is laying a track, he just omits a bait every now and again, so that the pup occasionally finds footsteps without food. Progressively and very carefully, the handler omits the bait more and more often, and the puppy begins to use the empty footsteps to guide it from one bait to the next. Now the young animal is beginning to learn the most important lesson that we have to teach it about tracking: It must search for and follow the track scent.

Gradually, we ask the puppy to work a longer and longer distance between baits. However, and this is the important point, the distribution of the baits along the track is random, meaning that the pup can never predict how far it will have to travel in order to reach the next bait. For example, a beginning track will have food at footsteps one, three, four, nine, eleven, twelve, fifteen and so on, while a more advanced track will have food in footsteps one, seven, twelve, twenty-one, twenty-two, thirty-five, thirty-nine and so forth. Because the puppy does not know whether the next bait is three paces away or sixteen, it keeps its nose down and searches intensively.

Over a period of several weeks, both the overall length of the tracks and the distance between the food drops gradually increase, until the puppy is tracking a distance of perhaps seventy-five paces and in the process finding only two or three baits.

We may still work the puppy on three tracks each training session, but only one of them is as much as seventy-five paces long. The other two are very short, and intended mainly for practice on the start and a few feet of very intense tracking. This too we randomize, running the short tracks and long ones in different order, so that when the pup starts a track it never knows whether it will end in ten feet or 150 feet.

Each track ends with a large food drop that rewards the pup for its work. Because we are depending upon food to motivate the youngster it must, of course, be brought to the tracking field keenly hungry. If for some reason it has little interest in tracking on a particular day, we immediately take it away from the field. We do not feed it that day (it can have water, of course), and we repeat the same track the next morning. We leave more than the usual amount of food at the end of the track, and if it does fine work we feed it well.

At this, the teaching stage of tracking, absolutely no corrections are made. The young dog is not scolded, physically punished or corrected or even told “No!” Instead, the handler helps and encourages the puppy in every possible way to understand what he desires. In short, the teaching phase of tracking concerns itself with preventing rather than correcting errors.

By the time that the dog has mastered straight tracks of about seventy-five paces, tracking exactly and with concentration from footstep to footstep, it will usually be old enough (six to seven months) and well motivated enough so that light corrections will harm neither its character nor its delight in tracking.

The handler now begins to give the youngster a little more leash as it works. Rather than walking hunched over right on top of the animal and meticulously guiding it down the track, ready to point to the footsteps with his hand any time the puppy veers a few inches downwind, he walks upright directly behind the pup on several feet of leash.

Whenever the dog deviates from the footsteps, the handler tells it “Phooey!” and pops the line gently. (We do not use the word “No!” because it is too strong and inhibitory in nature for tracking training.) At the same time he steps up next to the animal’s head and uses a finger to direct it back into the footsteps. The instant the dog recovers the track and moves forward exactly on top of it, the handler praises it soothingly and moves back behind it again.

GOAL 2: The dog will follow the track precisely through turns, without casting or circling.

Next the young dog must learn that the track will turn, and that it can turn with it and follow it in the new direction. This concept is difficult for both the dog (who has become quite certain that tracks always travel perfectly straight) and the handler (who must learn the knack of letting his dog solve a problem on its own but without allowing it to practice faulty tracking). The dog, for its part, must indicate loss of scent immediately so that it does not overshoot the turn and lose the track. And for his part, the handler must learn to read the signals that his dog gives when it detects that something has changed in the track.

Many trainers teach turns gradually, beginning with curves so slight that the dog scarcely takes notice, and continuing until the dog is making acute turns of more than 90 degrees.

But turns can also be taught as a “loss of track” exercise in footstep-to-footstep tracking. In this sort of exercise we expect the dog to negotiate a 90-degree turn right from the start. We prefer this method because, in order to make precise turns, the dog must learn to stop when it can no longer smell a footstep directly in front of it and check with its nose to its left and its right until it finds whether the track has ended or merely set off in a new direction. It is very important that

• the dog realizes within a foot or two that it has lost the footsteps

• it signals clearly and unambiguously that it has lost the footsteps

• its handler recognizes its loss of track signal, praises and encourages the animal to carefully check all around it for the new direction of the track

Otherwise the dog will often fail to stop the instant it overruns the turn. Its loss of track indication will become indistinct, and it will learn the habit of over-shooting turns and circling back to find them again.

Of course, if we have not already taught the dog to footstep track slowly and meticulously, it will “blow past” his first 90-degree turn and not indicate puzzlement or loss of track until several yards further on. In this case the handler can always stop the dog with the line, in order to prevent it from overrunning the turn, but then it is the handler who signals to his dog that the track is turning rather than the reverse.

Therefore, we must not begin work on turns until the young dog is tracking very exactly and confidently.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Baiting all the way through the turn

2. Baiting after the turn

3. Repeating the turn

Our first task is to make the dog realize that tracks often change direction. However, in the process we must avoid having it circle or practice faulty tracking in any way.

The handler lays three short tracks of about fifty to seventy-five paces each. All three have normal, well-laid and well-baited scent pads, but two of them turn one direction—right, for example—and one of them turns the other direction. The handler baits every single footstep through the turns, beginning about two yards before the turn and ending perhaps two yards after it. Each of the tracks ends with a food drop, and after the end of the last one the handler romps and plays ball with his dog for a while.

He starts his dog on the first track, keeping it on a very short leash, and makes sure that it is moving very slowly and carefully when it encounters the baits lying before the turn. As the dog moves along from footstep to footstep eating each of the baits, the handler steps up very close to it on the inside of the turn. It if has been well prepared and has learned to footstep track accurately, the dog should easily follow the turn around. But in the event that it begins to overrun the turn or go in the wrong direction, the handler is right there to help it by stopping it with the leash and then pointing out the new direction of the track with his hand.

The handler works his dog through the last two tracks in just the same way, and then plays with it and takes it home.

The next day he reverses the directions of the turns on the three tracks, so that now two of them turn left, and one turns right. As always, he is ready to help the dog before the animal gets into any difficulty.

As the days pass, the handler continues training on these series of short tracks with continuously baited turns, until the dog follows them steadily and precisely. However, the handler constantly varies the lengths of the legs of the tracks and he begins to increase their length as well, so that the animal never knows whether it will encounter a turn within three yards or thirty. In addition, the handler also occasionally picks a day to throw in a long, straight track of 150 or 200 paces in place of the normal series of three short tracks with turns in order to gain some length and add variety to training.

Up to this point we have used bait on the track to signal to the animal that the track was about to change direction and to help it follow through the turn. Now we must begin teaching the dog to recognize the change in direction itself and to find the second leg of the track on its own without the help of food in each footstep.

As before, the handler lays three short tracks with turns, but he does not bait the turns continuously. Instead, he leaves a food drop perhaps six or seven paces after the turn.

The first few training sessions that he performs this routine he can also double lay the turns in order to call his dog’s attention to the change in direction. He walks around the turn once, stops, turns around and walks directly on top of his footsteps back through the turn to a point about two yards before it; he then stops again, retraces his footsteps (so that he has actually walked through the turn three times) and recommences laying the new leg.

As he approaches the turns with his dog, the handler again moves up very close to the animal on the inside of the turn in order to help it if necessary. His task is a ticklish one. He must give the dog every opportunity to work the turn out itself, but at the same time he must be ready to intervene and help the animal before it overruns the turn or goes in the wrong direction.

The instant the animal picks up the new leg of the track and begins to follow it, the handler encourages it with praise and, when the dog comes upon the food drop six paces after the turn, the handler pats and praises it enthusiastically.

After several weeks of practice, the dog should be cleanly making turns to both the left and the right. However, the dog has not yet really learned the skill of following a turn in a track, for two reasons.

First, the handler is still indicating to his dog both the turn in the track and also the direction of the turn by moving up close alongside it on the inside of the turn. Second, he is intervening so quickly that the dog never loses the track for a moment. Thus the animal makes no loss of track indication and does not stop moving forward on its own. Instead it makes a turn when its handler signals it to make a turn.

We now have no alternative but to allow the dog to lose the track. We must stop warning it that the track is turning and instead begin letting it warn us that the track is turning.

The handler lays three short tracks with turns, as before, and leaves a food drop six paces after each turn. As he approaches the first turn with his dog, the handler gives no indication to the animal. One of three things will happen:

1. The dog will make the turn cleanly, going around it as if it were on rails.

2. The dog will stop within a foot or two after overrunning the turn, indicate loss of track, and then check carefully about it for the new leg and follow it.

3. It will overrun the turn by two or three feet or more without any loss-of-track indication. Then it may give every sign of continuing off over the horizon, or it may begin to cast wildly about for the scent.

It is, of course, ideal if the dog goes around the turn cleanly. We would like it to track this way always. However, no matter how good the animal is, sooner or later it will lose the track. Knowing this to be true, and recognizing that the dog will probably lose the footsteps momentarily several times on every track it ever runs, we must be sure of one thing: that it never “lies.” If the animal has not got the track exactly, we must encourage it to:

1. Indicate clearly that it has lost the footsteps.

2. Stop before it wanders any further from the track, and then cast carefully about for it.

If the dog makes the turn cleanly, wonderful! The handler praises it and lets it discover the food drop, feeds and plays with it at the end of the track and ends the session on that note. It cannot get any better.

If the dog indicates loss of track immediately after it overruns the turn, stops and begins to search carefully for the new leg of the track, still wonderful! The handler praises it softly for the indication and quietly encourages it to rediscover the track. On the second and third tracks the dog will probably make the turn more cleanly.

If, on the other hand, it overruns the turn and keeps going—without a strong indication of loss of track and without stopping—the handler tells it sharply “Phooey!” and then calls its name. He backs up a few feet along the track, calling his dog to him. When the animal arrives, the handler immediately restarts it on the track a few yards before the turn. If the dog overruns again, the handler again tells it “Phooey!” and then calls it back and restarts it.

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.

Only once the down on the article is completely taught does the handler begin to combine this skill with an actual track. He lays a long, straight track with perhaps three articles. The track ends in a food drop some fifteen or twenty paces past the last article. He makes sure that the track is very easy, and also that the ground cover is short so that it will not hide the articles.

At each article the dog will automatically down, and then the handler spends thirty seconds or a minute with it praising and petting it and giving it a piece of food from time to time.

Previously, the dog worked its way down the track simply to find the food drop at the end and all the baits along the way. Now, it will work its way down the track in order to find the articles as well, because they have come to represent relaxation, reassurance and pleasure.

Obviously, every time the dog stops and lies down on an article, it must start the track again. We consider each of these restarts almost equal in importance to the original start from the scent pad. It is vital that the dog put its nose to the ground and carefully move off down the track from footstep to footstep.

In competition, it is quite common to see dogs become excited by finding the article and therefore charge away from it when restarted, requiring anywhere from three to fifteen yards before they really begin to work again. If a difficult piece of terrain happens to lie right after the article, this habit can result in disaster.

Therefore, when the handler starts the dog from the articles, he takes great pains to make sure that the animal is calm and quiet, and puts its nose immediately to the ground. If necessary, he can also lay the track in such a fashion that the dog will find a small bait or two within the first twenty or thirty paces after the articles. The result should be that the dog will pick up the habit of tracking very carefully away from them.

Only when the dog is reliably finding all the articles and indicating them correctly, and also starting off from them in good style, does the handler begin to combine both turns and articles on the same track.

GOAL 4: The dog will complete tracks at least an hour old and approximately 1,000 yards in length without difficulty.

Up to this point in training, the handler has designed training tracks for his dog solely according to the lesson at hand. They have normally been rather short and simple, and seldom more than ten minutes old. Now, however, we have the trial regulations to worry about.

Our problem is to increase both the length and the age of the training tracks to comply with Schutzhund III regulations. (Ambitious trainers do not train for Schutzhund I and II, they train for Schutzhund III and pick up I and II on the way.) Furthermore, we must do it without detracting from the dog’s precision and performance.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Increasing length

2. Aging the track

We increase the length of the track very gradually. Also—and this is very important—we increase it randomly. For instance, one day the dog will have a short track with one turn, the next day a very long track with three turns, and on the third day it will have a short, complicated track involving four turns. Month by month, the average distance the dog must cover increases, but on a particular day it has no way of knowing if its last article and food drop lie 100 paces away or 1,000. The result of this uncertainty is a very intense, yard-by-yard search of the entire length of the track.

In addition, when deciding on the length of a training track, we also consider conditions of weather and terrain. For instance, a 1,000-yard track in a light dusting of snow is one thing, and a 1,000-yard track in a wheat field on a ninety-degree day in June is something else again.

When we advance the age of the track past the ten- to fifteen-minute mark for the first time, we manipulate only this one variable. We do not experiment with different lengths, terrains or conditions while we are teaching the dog to work older scent. Instead, we lay fairly stereotyped tracks of about Schutzhund I length and difficulty.

The handler increases the age of the track very gradually from one day to the next, five minutes at a time. He spends at least several days at each increment (twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, etc.). Depending upon conditions, the “hump”—where the predominant scent on the track changes from air to ground—should occur somewhere between twenty and forty minutes, and the handler should expect his dog to have some difficulty in this interval. He works close to his dog, handling it carefully, and helps it past any problems.

GOAL 5: The dog will learn to work its way confidently through difficulties encountered on the track.

Because handlers involved in organizing a competition want to see high scores in their trials, sponsoring clubs normally make every effort to provide optimal tracking conditions for the day of competition. Our club invariably uses a turf farm for trials. However, it is often not possible to arrange for the use of such a large piece of lush, green real estate. Especially in some of the more arid regions of the United States, American Schutzhund trainers regularly compete in tracking conditions that appall the German judges who are often brought in to officiate at the events. Sometimes the organizing club will make a special effort to provide very demanding conditions in order to find out whose dog “really tracks.” This was the case at the GSDCA/WDA Europameisterschaft Qualification Trial in Colorado in 1984, when the organizers tried to make absolutely sure that any dog that qualified for the WDA team would acquit itself well in the tracking phase of the European championships.

Other sorts of challenges will crop up unintentionally, as happened one day to a Schutzhund III competitor from New Mexico that was halfway through its tracking test when it was discovered that the spectators had been standing for a quarter of an hour on top of the last leg of its track.

Incidents of this sort are a reminder that luck plays a role in Schutzhund. There is nothing we can do to change our luck, so instead we try to teach our dogs to cope with the unexpected.

Thus far, we have performed the vast majority of our training in optimal conditions. Our dog has learned all its basic skills in short, regular, green grass with little wind. Now we must add difficulty to its work by exposing it to all sorts of adversities, including drastic changes in terrain and vegetation, roads and ditches and cross tracks cutting its track and the dog’s having to refind the track once it has lost it. However, we must do this in such a fashion as to increase the animal’s skill and its confidence in its ability, rather than the reverse.

Proofing in this manner improves not only the dog’s skill, but also its intensity and concentration. By proofing the animal we systematically teach it to calmly solve problems.

Important Concepts for Meeting the Goal

1. Negotiating changes in terrain

2. Crossing over an obstacle and then relocating the track

3. Recovering the track after losing it

4. Tracking surely despite adverse weather or ground conditions

5. Ignoring cross tracks

Several years ago, one of the best and most consistent tracking dogs in the United States landed a spot on the American team that was to compete at the world championships. While out on its track the day of the championships, its handler was appalled when this excellent dog suddenly and unequivocally stopped tracking at a point where the terrain changed abruptly from field grass to com stubble. It appeared as if the dog had run into a brick wall. It simply would not pass from one field to the next. Despite outstanding scores in the other two phases of competition, its handler went home a bitterly disappointed man.

What the dog clearly understood from its training was that one does not go where there is no track. Because of lack of experience, the dog concluded from the drastic change of terrain that when the track scent changed, its track ended there at the edge of the grassy field.

In order to avoid problems like this, handlers can systematically train the dog to track confidently across all sorts of changes in terrain—from dirt to short grass, from wheat stubble to alfalfa, and so forth.

Whenever he can take advantage of such changes, the handler lays relatively simple tracks across them, always leaving some sort of reward (an article or a food drop) on the track ten or twenty paces past the zone of difficulty. At first the handler helps the dog carefully across the border between the two types of terrain, staying close to it and pointing out the track to it if it becomes uncertain. Later, the handler stays back a few feet on the long line, and obliges the dog to work through the transition in track scent itself.

As a result of just a little methodical training, the dog can gain great skill and confidence in tracking from one type of terrain into a vastly different type.

Many times the authors have encountered unusual obstacles while tracking. One of us was once obliged to shinny over a huge fallen tree in the midst of an FH track. The dog scrambled across and immediately recovered the track and set off down it. Even in Schutzhund III competition, dogs are not infrequently required to track across dirt roads, ditches or sharp inclines. It is best that we carefully teach our dog how to negotiate these small disturbances in track scent before it encounters them in a trial.

The handler lays his track across the obstacle (a dirt road, for instance) very carefully, leaving distinct footsteps all the way up to it, heavily scenting the road itself, and even laying a bait right in the middle of it. A few feet on the other side of it, he leaves an article.

The first few times that he takes his dog over such an obstacle, he helps the animal across and makes sure that it finds the article easily. Once the dog shows an understanding of its task, the handler simply gives it a lot of line. He lets the dog cross the road, cast about on the other side until it recovers the track and then follows it down to the article.

Soon the dog will develop a useful strategy for crossing obstacles without losing its composure, even when they are virtually devoid of scent.

It is a fact of life that the dog will, on occasion, completely lose the track. When this occurs in competition, the experience is nerve-wracking for the handler, as he watches his dog cast for the track and listens behind him for the blast on the judge’s whistle that will tell him that his day of competition is over. Much of the stress of having the dog go wide of the track can be reduced if we know that the dog has a strategy for recovering it.

Losing the track is expensive in terms of points, especially if the dog has to cast across a wide area to refind it. But, if it does recover the track and follow it out to the end, the judge will take note of its persistence and, during his critique, comment favorably on the dog’s ability to work independently.

We begin teaching the dog by using a heavily baited straight track. Somewhere along it, the handler simply takes a giant step off to the right or the left and then continues parallel to his original path, again baiting each footstep as he goes.

When the dog comes down the first leg of the track to the dead end, it will indicate loss of track, and then begin to cast about. The baits on the second, parallel leg will help it to locate it easily. In addition, the handler stays close by its side to keep it from circling or casting too far back and forth. Ideally, the animal will search slowly and carefully, so that it covers the area immediately about it very efficiently and without a great deal of wasted movement that will cost it points in the trial and possibly get it even more lost than it was originally.

After the dog has learned to search efficiently, the handler gradually reduces the amount of bait on both legs of this “step-over” track. It is absolutely essential that the handler know exactly where both legs begin and end. Therefore, he should always lay his own step-overs, rather than employ a tracklayer.

One of the most useful benefits of this type of proofing is that the dog will not become stressed or anxious when it loses the track during a trial, because rather than being punished for its error, it has learned a way to rectify it.

Proofing for bad weather and terrain means going out to track in unpleasant conditions such as strong wind, rain or very high or low temperatures. It also means laying tracks on sandy, rough or hard-packed surfaces and in dead or newly mowed grass.

The important thing is to help the dog a great deal initially so that it can negotiate these conditions successfully and meet them without losing its composure.

In Hungary in 1985, the competitors in the world championships had been promised lush tracking fields, so everyone worried far more about the obedience and protection phases. No one in Hungary expected weather in the high 90s in late September. Neither did they expect cornfields seared by the sun. That year the dogs worked in terrible heat on dead, brown vegetation. Competitors who finished with a passing score breathed a sigh of relief, and undoubtedly they passed because they had prepared their dogs well for such adversities.

Few of us have the opportunity to work in fields that are absolutely clean. The vast majority of available tracking sites are chronically contaminated by mice, other dogs, and scurrying rabbits, joggers or schoolchildren taking shortcuts. For this reason it is important to proof the dog on cross tracks, so that it will ignore them and continue following the tracklayer’s footsteps.

Again, the handler lays a straight track for the dog, and then arranges to have a number of different types of cross tracks “cut” it—a bicyclist, a person on foot, a car, etc. It is best if, in the beginning, these cross tracks are greatly different in age than the handler’s track. A few yards past the point where each cross track will cut his footsteps, the handler leaves a reward for the dog—an article or a bait.

As the dog passes over each cross track, it is allowed to, and even should, acknowledge it. However, it if begins to commit to it in any way, the handler gently stops the animal and redirects it back to the track without scolding or punishing it. As soon as the dog is back on the original footsteps, he encourages the animal to continue tracking.

Once the dog has had extensive practice and shows an understanding of the task, the handler can correct it if it commits to a cross track. A quiet “Phooey!” and a light slap on the back with the tracking line should be sufficient.

SUMMARY

To summarize our philosophy of tracking training:

First we teach the animal, supporting and encouraging while it learns the concepts and skills that we present. Then we train it, presenting problems and correcting the dog if it errs, in order to make it clear exactly what the job is. Lastly we proof it by presenting problems that are far harder than those it will encounter in trial.