Doberman Scent Tracking
Getting Started
One does not train a dog to follow a scent; dogs do this naturally from their first breath of life. Training involves motivating the dog to follow the scent to its source and to do so on command. Preparing a dog for scent tracking can start early. Puppies can start with a short track on the floor to find their food or treats.
Besides a dog’s nose being 100,000 times more sensitive than a human’s, they also interpret this sense differently. Scent is a dog’s primary sense. Similar to how we interpret sight, a dog interprets smell. When we smell tomato sauce simmering on the stove, a dog smells the tomatoes, each herb, the garlic and the mushrooms. It also sees that we got the tomatoes from the garden and brought them through the back door, the mushrooms from the refrigerator and cut them up on the cutting board, the herbs from the spice rack, and the tomato base from the pantry in the basement. Scent training hones and harnesses this ability.
The Doberman is highly intelligent and can find anything. They will learn from their mistakes and their handler’s mistake and apply these lessons in later searches. This makes the Doberman an especially adept tool for scent tracking but also makes our mistakes in training more costly, as they are difficult to un-train.
As with any new activity, it’s a good idea to do what you’re doing now and read up. There a plenty of good books on the subject and many people who have trained their dogs and achieved titles using methods available in books.
The next thing is finding a tracking class or club. AKC has a good resource for finding clubs on their club search page. Attending a tracking trial will allow you to network with other handlers and get involved in the sport. Tracking trials are a very involved process and can usually use additional people willing to help. Just remember to dress for all weather, as tracking trials, like that which they are essentially training for, occurs in all weather.
Trial setup begins the day before the even when the track layers plot a track for each dog. This track is marked in the field with flags at each turn and the judges draw a chart of each track including land marks, allowing them to determine its location during the trial and whether the dog is following it correctly.
On the trial day, the flags are removed and the participating handlers gather for a ‘draw’ that determines the order dogs will start. Then the track layers walk the track placing the articles and once the track is allowed to age, the trial begins.
The dog must closely follow the track the track layer walked, indicating each article. Two judges follow along watching to determine if the dog is on track. If the dog looses the scent or wanders off the track and the judges determine he is unable to find it, a whistle is blown signaling the dog has not passed the trial. There is no time limit; if the dog can follow the track finding all the articles, he has passed the trial and will earn the title for that trial level.
