When a dog is being trained to be a true tracking dog to be used in the search and rescue area, there must be a definite understanding that it is NOT being trained for an AKC title. Often, achieving an AKC title has nothing to do with following the human scent nearly as often as following the requirements the handler sets for the dog. Also, the motivation is usually hot dog pieces that are placed on the track by the person “setting” or “laying” the track.
A person training a dog to track must first learn the theory of scent and fur rafts; that a human being will constantly shed skin cells and that these cells will form a “raft” that will drift in the wind and fall to the ground as the person moves. It is this trail of skin cells that the tracking dog must be trained to follow. How and where the skin cells land on the surrounding vegetation or surface will determine how and where the sniffer dog will locate the scent. How long the dog can pick up the scent will depend on the quality of training and the dog’s natural abilities, along with the effects of weather on the trail. The other requirement to successfully train a tracking dog is that the handler motivates the dog not to stray from the trail under any circumstances.
A person training a dog for a tracking title is not concerned with the life and death scenario of a true search “mission”, but rather with achieving a title, which can only be obtained by following a prescribed “lead”. that he is wearing in a specific way for the dog. Training for this title often involves the use of hot dog pieces placed in the human’s path, which encourages the dog to follow exact foot prints on the ground.
A person who is training a dog for certification as a “track dog” in the search and rescue area recognizes that the dog MUST be motivated to follow the trail of skin rafts to the source. Food use, if any, should be limited to one reward after successfully following the trail. The main emphasis in tracking dog training should be on setting up many different scenarios and using many different “victims”, while recognizing that the handler’s task is to learn to recognize how the dog is reading the trail and to train the dog. to identify the track correctly through scent discrimination.
The best motivation is undoubtedly the strong desire to find a human and the old standby from the beginning for this type of motivation is the “runaway pup” which has been the basis for the training of search dogs for many years. The difference between training a wilderness search dog and a scent discrimination tracking dog is simply that the dog’s exposure to airborne scent is limited as much as possible during its initial training. The task of the human being is to learn to “read” the dog and also to discover how the wind transports and distributes the skin cells and, last but most important, to motivate the dog throughout the training to want to follow the trace back to its origin.