Police Service Dog Tracking - Page 1

Hi All,

Looking for some advice with my 2 year old, male German Shepherd Dog regarding his tracking.

Overall he is a balanced, medium/high drive dog with strong nerves and is developing well as a young police service dog. I am looking to progress his tracking in all aspects including distance, time and accuracy but I am having a few problems.

Example:
Average 800 meter pattern track, 5 legs, 3 Articles, 40 minutes old
Weather: light winds, early morning, damp lush vegetation
End of Track Reward: Toy or Body


He starts off well, pulls into his harness and confidently drags me into the start of the track. This determination carries on through the first couple of corners but as he begins tire, his head comes up and he tends to overshoot the corners and on occasions would not display the loss of track for 30 meters or more if I was to keep going with him.  I have attempted to counter this by "kicking out the corner" or triple laying them. I have also tried baiting the the leg coming out the corner with liver or chopped hot dogs to give him the incentive to turn. I have also varied the length of the legs, overall distance and shortened the time. These methods have still not given the desired effect. His article indication is excellent and drops into the down without hesitation. Overall he appears to be blowing hot and cold. Some days he tracks like he is on rails and other days he would be better off sitting in the van. You can imagine the frustration !!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that he is a service dog and the main objective is to track down the bad guy and indicate any evidence along the way and he will never be scored on how accurate his track was.  I believe he is a young dog with a lot of potential and want to get good solid foundations and consistency is all disciplines which in turn should benefit us as a team long term.

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

I am no expert, but I think for police work, two is not "young". I think they want to evaluate and train the dog themselves, and will want a younger, greener dog. But I am just making a pet-person type of guess. So I think you are training more successfully for a SAR dog? Might get better responses if that is more practical as a goal? IMHO

Philly0787,
Is this actually a Patrol K-9, and you are a handler working the street with him or a dog you are training?  If this is an actual Patrol dog, I'd change the way you lay your tracks and method of tracking.  800 meters is a good distance and if your dog tires after a few legs or misses the corners then there could be several things going on.  Tracking dogs need excellent conditioning and need to be in excellent shape.  Tracking is not only physically tiring but mentally fatiguing.  One thing to remember about tracking and tracking dogs is that the "track" teaches the dog how you want it to track.  Track design and construction or laying the track is critical to a dog's success.  There are many factors that will affect a dog's ability, desire and intensity to track.  Temperature, age, humidity, wind, drive, motivation, etc are a few of the factors.  
  
If this is actually a Patrol dog, I'd stop laying him tracks in grass and go to more "trailing" especially on hard surfaces.  Unless you live in the sticks most of the tracks I do are for armed robbery suspects that have fled a store on foot in an urban setting.  I rarely track on grass and if you work in an urban or suburban area your style of training will greatly limit your options and apprehension rate.  For sport training like SchH or AKC tracking the way you are designing your tracks is fine, but IMHO for Police work I wouldn't do it that way.  

There are a lot of differences between sport tracking and real world tracking.  One thing for Police style tracking I never lay my own tracks and I NEVER have the track layer accompany me or my guys on the track.  That is a big pet peeve of mine.  We teach scent discrimination tracking and having the track layer accompany the handler on the track defeats the purpose, IMO.  Your best tracks are run "blind" where the handler does not know where the track goes and must read and rely on the dog.  
 
There is a lot to get into and if you are working a Police K-9 I'd be happy to offer any insight or advice that I can.

Jim

very well explained slamdunc. In addition I try not to use the same scenario twice in a row upon locating the quarry. Also I train my teams to search off the lead the majority of their tracks.

I hope you never get questioned in court about track continuity with dogs off leash tracking.

Not once yet. The handlers know to stop the dog if he is going to get that far out ahead.

Most likely, your problem is that you are  loading on the dog too much ,...or more then he is ready for and / or there is a lack of motivation or both. How do you motivate the dog? What does s/he get on the end of the track is of foremost and paramount  importance, but you did not even mentioned it in your detailed question.  You want something from the dog and dog want s something from you. If you do not give it to him/her than s/he will not work well or will stop altogether. From your description it looks to me that you are trying to get something from the dog ( making corners) and he is not motivated to do so. That is a wrong path you are on.  You need to reverse your approach . First explain to  the dog what he will get and get him crazy or "addicted'" to it  and then teach him to cut corners or what ever the exercise is for such motivation.  If you are "telling" him  what to do before such strong motivation is in place on short distance then 800 m  and legs and turns and so on are way too premature. You should never increase the difficulty of the exercise unless the dog is motivated and fully committed  and you can not progress the exercise unless the dog mastered lover level and you just know that the increase in difficulty will be of no consequence to the dog or hardly noticeable by the dog.  If you do not obey  these rules, then you will fail to get from the dog what he /she can actually give you. 
Prager Hans
 

As Prager and Slamdunc have said, he just sounds mentally tired to me too.  Have you trained with something like the H.I.T.T. method away fro, soil/grass and instead on an artificial surface like concrete, blacktop or asphalt?  I would say give him easier tracks and make sure he really knows what he is smelling for, essentially the human trail and not the environmental aftermath of smooshed vegetation.  I see many dogs that have learned to track the smell of broken grass/plants/soil and once you hit them with thier first cross track they get easily confused, until they are taught them to track the shed human skin alone.  At least in my experience, you have to build up the dogs mental stamina over time by starting with easy short tracks and then gradually get them longer and longer.  As for the "reward part" I've heard a million different things and I'm sure most work, pending on the situation.  But my main points would be: Does the dog know he is looking for human scent and not broken vegetation scent on a track?  If he does not, then you need to isolate the human scent for him to track and practice on that, without other paired environmental scents like grass, soil , vegetation etc. I personally use the HITT method, but there may be some other way to do this.  Has the dog actually worked his way up slowly to 800 meters or did you just drop him into 800 meters expecting him to not tire?  Do you have a command to refocus him on the track, I've seen some people just hold the scent article to the dogs nose, but I feel that the dog needs to know some word in order to refocus them on what they were asked to do in thr first place.  They also need to know some kind of reward is on the way, per completion of the task.  In my opinion, a mentally tired dog, without a refocus Command, can be easily distracted especially without a known reward anywhere on the horizon.

Also on an anecdotal note, from what I have seen, dogs who were taught some kind of  "area search" indication via "air scenting"  before being taught tracking, seem to have much more "mental stamina" to keep working even when confused by a cross track or a longer track with many turns, as opposed to dogs that started on tracking, who them move on to "air scenting" activities later.  I just don't see the same level of "stick to it'ness" in the beginning from those dogs to "find it".  I have seen many nosework sport dogs go on to tracking sport years later, after doing nosework and they seem to be able to move onto longer tracks without tiring, much faster than dogs that never did any kind of "air scenting" work.  It almost like the dog is thinking "wow this is SOOO much easier to get paid for than the other nose thing I do, so I'll just keep following this scent until I hit the reward".  I know this may not be universal true, but my gut says that the "thinking" which the dogs does to "air scent" their way to an article is somehow harder than the action putting their nose on the ground and following a track.

I have taught dogs to SchH track for years and have also taught dogs to scent discriminate hard surface track.  I have never had an issue with either style not being motivated or losing interest in tracking.  I have converted well established "ground surface, sport dogs" to trailing dogs with no issues.  Any dog that has some drive, is properly motivated and rewarded can be taught to track with intensity in either style.  It all goes back to the track design and building intensity, style, technique and desire.  The design of the track and the reward builds the intensity and desire.  

 

momos garage that is an excellent point. First free  airscent and then track to follow the track. The reason for that is that if you let dog free airscent first and then you make in track or trail-track then he will understand the task better and it is easier for him to do free airscent. It is in principle of "from easier to more difficult." ->The tracking on long line is more difficult then free search. 
By motivation to track I  meant that I would like to know what the dog gets on the end of the track. In nature the track has purpose and thus it needs to have such purpose in training too. 
Prager Hans