All i can say is wow, the predjuce against the poor police, with their standard of tracking or even biting how sad, from people who I consider as being open minded and with a great deal of knowledge.

As a police dog handler and instructor, I feel a little agrieved that all police dogs are being laughed into some sub standard animal.

There are some awesome police dogs and handlers in the UK and in Scotland inparticular. True a great deal of police dogs will only reach the minimum standard required for an operational licence, this is due to the fact most police officers who work a dog are exactly that a police officer with a dog, and not a dog handler (if that makes sense).

However there are others who live and breath dog training , whos dogs are way above the required standard for a licence and who have brought in knowledge from civi trials, schutzhund, KNPV and a range of other areas.
Please dont lump all police dogs as not as good as sport dogs, there is good and bad in both, I have seen a bucket raking gift dog form a council estate stand his ground against charging football hooligans, and I have seen a Schutzhund 1 dog turn tail and run from a drunk hiding in a back garden armed with a paint brush (true).

Sorry if im being a bit defensive .

The guy that the thread is talking about is an ex dog instructor from Tayside police called Ron Anderson. The hard surface tracking i think was relating to an American website where the woman was using some cocktail of human sweat sprayed onto tarmac to train dogs???.

Although I agree with the majority grass is my prefrence for starting tracking.

I would be interested in a workshop, sorry still cannot pm or email

All I can say is that (mostly) due to his training my dog has only ever missed its track twice in competition and on both occassions no other dog achieved its track (one was a UD track and we later found that a hot air baloon had landed in the field so there was fumes from the fuel everywhere and the second was a WD track in stormy conditions - you got soaked walking from car to base, 5 yards!)

Hi Nick, how many trials have you actually run?

There are several WT Champions who fail tracks quite often...............................

If you could find out that would be great

If anyone is interested in a tracking workshop for east central scotland I can contact the guy who trained me (he was trained by tom middlemiss).

Anyway, if anyone wants to PM I'll ask John, he will charge a fee, but it is likely to be low (less than a tenner)

John was taught how to tracklay by Tom Middlemas not how to track which is slightly different.