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Posted by Bodog
on 6/1/2012, 9:26 pm, in reply to "Re: CC???"
198.228.200.144
I wish I could draw it. Walk downwind a ways, make some turns, double back over your own track, make some more turns, end at a location upwind of part of the track after what is essentially a fish hook track. Ensure the dog stays on the track until the dog finds the scent cone coming from the source it's been tracking. Start down wind of the dog, end someplace that's upwind of part of the track so the dog is hit by the scent and should lift the nose for airborne scents vs ground disturbance. Advanced training is longer tracks criss crossed by the source and/or neutral subjects with the target farther and farther from the track. A successful track in an urban setting teeming with distractions, running water, and concrete with the dog transitioning from detecting ground scent to an overhead moving air scent and the dog will be a top performer.
I doubt US amateur schutzhund does anything like that. I know the Dutch, Belgian, and German law enforcement agencies do. I also know certain US law enforcement agencies do, usually with less success as a whole. Not knocking US law enforcement agencies, the Europeans tend to take their working law enforcement canines a little more seriously, hence the huge amount of imported working canines in the US.
One of the top dogs I've seen, it was on video, was a dog tracking a 30 something hour old trail over solid concrete and through a busy building in a downtown Belgian city during the summer heat, it had rained prior to starting the track and had subsequently dried, ending in the dog finding the source hiding on a rooftop. That's an inestimable number of conflicting human odors and the track should have been washed out. That dog is/was insanely great. I've come across and trained with solid tracking/trailing dogs, including my own, and haven't seen anything that could come close to that level. I believe that dogos could do it, albeit with a different mindset than the big three: Belgian, German, and Dutch shepherds. I wish I had two-three years to dedicate to training a dog to that high level. Hell, I wish I had the knowledge to even come close to training a dog to that level.
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