Sch/SAR tracking - Page 1

From a learning standpoint which lays a better foundation for the other if you were teaching one after the other. Such as, if you want the dog to learn air scenting and tracking it's best to learn the more instinctual air scenting second.  Theory being, as I have been taught, if done in reverse order the dog will fall back on the easier task of air scenting when he should be ground tracking.

In that vein, which would you say is more foundational, Sch or SAR? And would it be confusing for the dog to learn both?

Good Question

The easy one first.  If a dog is to schutzhund and SAR then schutzhund should precede SAR. I don' t know how people do who continue in sport after trailing but the few I have talked with have had some problems.    In sport the dog is penalized for trailing as the actual strongest scent of the human may NOT be on the footfall path.  They are also penalized for casting at corners etc.......most SAR trailing dogs would be working with a scent article and if scented on the track itself (as in sport) and the person who laid the track is in the general vicintiy would not be penalized for ignoring the track to go straight to the tracklayer.  A good trailing dog will cut off the track in the presence of a stronger air scent of the subject they are trailing.  

I am not going to get into the "crushed vegetation" vs. "human scent" discussion as there have been plenty of those. Yes under ideal conditions the bulk of the scent probably will be close to the footfall path.   

I am not sure that air scenting is "easier" or "more instinctual" than trailing.  I think that a lot of  people have observed that it is easier to get a trailing dog to cast for air scent than a dog who has only been trained in air scent to put his nose to the ground, so it probably is true.   Trailing dogs have to work out scent pools, so they routinely do air scent in the act of trailing.

It could be too, that for those air scent dogs trained in a non scent specific way, they don't get any positive reinforcement for trailing because they only get rewarded for finding a person via air scent and problably have learned to ignore a lot of other human ground contamination that they learn does not pay off.  Just conjecture ton my part to try to explain why this observation has been made. Take it for what it is worth, wild speculation.

Now for the scent specific dog (trailing AND air scent) they start in trailing and get down the scent discrimination peice firmly so that they only search for the person associated with the article.  Then it is easy for them to transition air scent for that one and only person.  You cast them in an area and they will pick up whatever is strongest - air scent or trail.  Most of these dogs, considered "area search dogs" are worked offlead.  The concept of a scent specific air scent dog is not widely used but it is heald dearly by those who use it and IS accepted by some of the certification standards and NIMS  Credentialing Standards (US)

I have heard it said time and again it is very easy to teach a foot step tracking dog to trail, but almost impossible to each a trailing dog to footstep track.

-Calvin

Calvin

That probably makes sense.  A dog's natural reaction is to air scent.  In footstep, the dog is manipulated and conditioned to concentrate solely inside the footprint.  many trainers have to work hard at gaininga deep nose.  

I don't agree that the natural inclination is to airscent -- the wild canid uses both skills and if you have had a dog go off on a deer trail you know they are naturally trailing.   Some dogs are naturally more inclined to trail and others more inclined to air scent.  The kind of tracking footstep to footetep you do in sport is not like natural trailing.