Positive PetzineDinner Time Fun - Tracking & Nosework
Would you believe that your dog is capable of following a track left by a person and finding them at the end, and that you can teach this in the time it takes to feed his normal daily meal without any extra training? Many dog owners are learning about the sport of Tracking. Find out if your dog has what it takes to be the next Tracking Champion or Search and Rescue hero!
The plan is really quite simple. You take a portion of your dog's normal meal in a plastic bag. Then you 'lay the track', just walk normally across your yard, placing a piece of food in each step.
Pretty easy right? Your dog shouldn't have any trouble at all finding all the food you left lying around the yard. When he gets to the end of the track, tell him what a good boy he is and give him the rest of his meal. He doesn't actually have to find anyone at the end, yet. He just needs to find the food.
Next meal you do the same thing, but don't place the food in every footstep. Leave a few out, one here and one there. The idea is to make your dog work a little harder to find the food, but still succeed really easily.
Next meal you do the same thing, but place food in every second footstep.
Next meal you place food in every third footstep.
Continue in this fashion, adding a few mild changes of direction to the track. Make it easy for your dog, the idea is to have him succeed really easily. This is just the beginning after all.
What we're trying to teach is a connection between the scents left on a track and the food. At first it's just a continuous trail of food, but as you start leaving food out your dog will have to look for clues. The consistent clue is that the food is always where your footsteps have been.
Dogs already know how to track. They are born with an amazing ability to find things using their noses. What we are teaching here is that we want them to follow footsteps. The food reinforces this behaviour.
Most dogs love this game, it makes dinner time so much more fun! Dogs are genetically programmed to work and hunt for their food. It doesn't take long to give them this fun and enriching game to play.
Who knows? Maybe you have the next Tracking Champion or Search and Rescue hero right under YOUR nose?
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Comments
Tracking for the dog you don't want to graze
How do you encourage tracking by using food when you do not want to encourage the dog to 'graze' for food everywhere it goes?
re: Tracking for the dog you don't want to graze
Is this an actual problem you are having, caused by teaching your dog to track with food?
If you have a dog who is a little obsessive about searching for food because they have learned that food can be found on the ground, then a little care needs to be taken. If you want to extinguish this behaviour completely, then make sure your dog never, ever finds food on the ground ever again (which is probably a little unrealistic).
Alternatively, you can put some boundaries around this behaviour. I would think tracking for food would be therapeutic, the dog learns to search when there is a track to be followed, and if you are diligent in your training you can even put this on cue. Your dog will then be less likely to search for food except when cued.
Of course, there are many ways to put a boundary around obsessive behaviours, and I would need to know more about the problem before making any suggestions, but tracking could be a good outlet for these drives and could bring the "problem" behaviour under control.
If you are actually teaching your dog to track, and you think the food is too distracting (dog looking for food scents instead of human scents or crushed vegetation), then you can use conditioned reinforcers. There are two approaches:
1. Steve White's approach, use a clicker and give the treat from hand
2. My approach, use articles which are conditioned reinforcers and teach the dog to search for the articles.
Regards,
Aidan
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