Training Your Dog To Track And Varying Track Age For Police or Competiton Tracking

April 19, 2011 - PRLog -- Varying Track Age

Under ideal conditions, a track of footprints across a lush grassy field with a sufficient delay in time to allow bacteria reaction on the soil causing an appropriate odour, is probably the best type of track to have.

As a foot lands on grass or dirt, which is referred to as a “hot track” because it is freshly laid, it creates a disturbance. Individual blades of grass are broken and dirt is overturned. This
creates a small scent cloud of ground odour that hovers above each footprint. If you can imagine the smell of fresh cut grass in the summer time, that is what an individual footprint smells, somewhat, like to a dog.

When observing dogs that worked moderately aged tracks, (twenty to forty minutes old), the dog tended to move faster and not cast as wide on the track. Perhaps, bacteria had a chance to act, making it easier for the dogs to detect. Dogs took a while to work out very aged tracks, (one and half hours old), and casting became wider on the track. One possible reason for this is that when scent ages for a very long period it goes back to being difficult to detect because
bacteria is drying up or effected upon by other conditions.

So theoretically, running hot tracks may actually be similar in amount of scent present as running very aged tracks.

For the purpose of tracking dog training, this may be an important time consideration. That is why my first introduction to a track or scent pad is when they are moderately aged and not on a hot or old track. (I will go into detail about this in the sequence description.) Moderately aged and very aged mean different things in different parts of a country. You may have to experiment with this in your environment and find the variety of trail age that will work for your requirements.

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