Tracking

Tracking, trailing and other forms of scent work are activities that bring you to the very essence of what a dog is. Scent work is a partnership in which you are asking the dog to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

When you work with a dog in scent work, you quickly learn that the dogs knows a different world. While we are used to the idea of a scent "covering up" another that rarely applies to dogs. To us a scent is somthing like having blurred vision. If you were to look at this text with a magnifying glass smeared with oil the text would blur. The text would be just as sharp and individual but you would not be able to perceive it. Instead the individual elements would overlap. That is how we experience scent. The dog picks out and distinguishes scent with a clarity we can't match.

For the most part sport scent work is limited to tracking or trailing, although obedience some other activities may include scent discrimination. Just about any dog can learn to track. The teaching of tracking is itself very instructive. At the novice levels the dog is started at the beginning of the track, and the dog is encouraged to sniff around to identify the scent to be followed. Because the direction is established the dog should be able to (with training) pick out the correct trail to follow. Some other interesting things I learned included scent drift. Depending upon the style being taught the dog might not actually follow the "footsteps" of the person. Instead the dog may follow the scent trail which may drift away from the actual track. My dog Oso typically tracked about six feet from the actual footsteps. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but my instructor explained what he was doing. If he had been preparing for a different style he might have been required to ignore the scent trail and focus only on the footsteps of the track layer.

Training dates and trial dates can be found on the left hand side. So the organisers know how much land is required, it is very important to phone our secretary to tell her you will be attending.

Secretary: Rena Shaw (09) 445 0138

Start Time: 8:30am

Venue: Shaws Farm, Biddick Road, Karaka
Bring: Dog's favourite toy, lunch and drink.

Cost: $5.00 for members and first timers and $10 for non-members.

Site Designed and Managed By CRd'zine