It all depends what kind of searching one trains the dog for

The easiest is to train for search of dead bodies (all smell alike), the most difficult, I would say for a specific human, but in "dense" environment, full of other smells, eg in a city. The easiest track to follow is on a sligtly moist, soft path, the most difficult - on hard pavements & concrete.

Another kind is the search for a human in wilderness or avalanche - in that case the dog just searches for a human, i.e. any human.

Yes VST surface tracking is the hardest.

There ARE times when a bit of clothing is sometimes used, as they say it all depends.

But if you are looking at avalanches, earthquake, etc it is not.

Blood tracking qualifications include 48 hour old tracks. Some of us often lay tracks which are at least 24 hours old and through water, over walls etc so that when we compete 3 hours is a walk in the park!

I'm a relative newcomer to working trials and we train initially by food in every footfall and then putting less and less food out. In training, we always put some food on the track though. I was taught by someone whose methods I like and it seems to be working well. Having said that, I do have to think hard about where to put the food, as now we're doing tracks with a good number of legs and turns, Dill will be a little sod and try to cut accross if he air-scents a treat or even an article! I'm tackling this by using a track I know the route of and holding up the line so he can't move until he's back on the track.

I used to do a lot of bodying with the Lake District search dogs - which is not tracking at all, but air-scenting. Last year, we had a talk from 2 search dog handlers from outside the Lakes who did tracking - although they refered to it as 'trailing' because....

They said that their dogs did track a specific scent because they trained like this (I'm only quoting )

In training, the dogs were given an article belonging to the missing person to sniff, like a pillow or hair-brush.
They were then presented with 3 articles - only 1 of which had the missing person's scent on.....and they had to indicate which the correct scent was.

I can see that this will test that the dog is capable of identifying one scent from another and finds it rewarding to then pick out the article bearing this scent (as that's basically the same as the obedience scent test)

However, they believe that this means the dog will then choose only to follow the same scent on the ground.

What confused me is that they never mentioned a stage wherby the dog is given several possible tracks to follow and is only allowed to go forward if he picks the right one. Even if they had said that, I might still have been slighly dubious of the effectiveness of this. Without it, I can't see how the dog would make the link between a scent discrimination test and a tracking exercise - or am I being thick?

The handler then said that the police dogs could 'only' follow 'a track' i.e. search along a trail of scent that could really have been laid by anyone, as opposed to searching for a specific person - wheras their search dogs could actually choose the correct trail to follow.

Just wanted to add - as a 'body' who bodied for over 10 years - SB is absolutley right about search and rescue dogs: they actually have to find several different bodies scattered over the hills on trainig exercises and they are just programmed to find locating any 'body' rewarding, because if they bark at the body, they get a game / food!

We didn't do any tests, but neither did we use food on track- we do pure trailing... The dog has to find a specific person in various environments, also in the city, distinguish the scent of the "victim" from many other scents. The dog may track, use upper wind, take shortcuts and whatever as long and she's efficient - finds the "victim". Now we do more and more difficult trails, practice crossroads, resuming the scent after getting off the bus, etc.

We started in a natural way. First, our dog was tracking just me or my husband - dogs usually want to see their pack stay together so we used this as the basic motivation factor. Before getting on a set track she was asked to sit, had the harness put on and was given a piece of "used" garment to smell and the command "search". This was to put her into a routine... Then we started using other people as 'victims' - friends she knew, so that she'd grasp the association between the "item", the track and the "victim". Only later she began tracking people she didn't earlier know, just on the basis of the scent, but by that time she understood that she was expected to follow the scent of the "item".

Did I answer your question?

BTW Finding new and non-familiar "victims" for practice is the real bottleneck for us now. I think I'll have to ask scouts for help

That's really interesting: many thanks for posting! I know what you mean about finding new 'victims'.

I find this bit very interesting as I did some of this type of training with my GSD a couple of years ago. He was asked to sit and harness put on and then I would disappear a distance away (gradually going further and further and using more complex routes). However, we never got to the stage of swapping my hiding to me being on the end of the line - so I would love to know whether your dog was as keen to find someone else she knew as she was at finding you? The motivating factor in our training was the ball, but I was never 100% sure that the particular dog I was training would love his ball enough to bother tracking for a relative stranger, if you see what I mean?

I know what you mean... The first time she was tracking a total stranger was at the tracking seminar run by Inki Sjosten in 2010. I was curious myself if she would follow, but there was no problem at all. By that time she already understood what the "job" was all about.

When tracking my own track (which I put myself a few hours earlier) we found difficult to make the dog aware where the track end was... she wanted to go on tracking in circles Inki suggested I should leave some pate at the end, not to motivate her, but to signal she's completed the task. This, together with a portion of solid praising did the trick. Still it's more logical for the dog and makes more sense to her to find a human at the end of the track. This + verbal praising is the best motivation! She's most proud of herslef

On the other hand I'm aware that in the development of the breed, trailing was the main selection criterion, so I suppose it's in my dog's genes, which makes it easier. We're only developing what she's brought with her when she was born.

It's interesting to watch Lorka working - she treats it very seriously! Although quite moody in obedience classes, when trailing sh's really concentrated on the task - ignores most distractions, even deers and hares running almost next to her. I think she simply loves her job!

So would you say that the "job" itself is Lorka's motivation?

There is the possibility that I might be able to do some trailing again with my working line bred GSD. He is absolutely ball mad, and so I feel more confident that he will trail a stranger (once he knows his job) for the motivation of his ball and a game at the end of it. We will see

Do you have any photos of Lorka training? Would really enjoy seeing them