Schutzhund Tracking

 

I think too many points are lost unnecessarily on articles than perhaps any other aspect of Schutzhund 1 tracks. At 10 points per article a perfectly good track can be ruined by one or two simple mistakes in this area. After all, they are your articles, ones your dog is familiar with, and you know where you placed them. Point loss for missed articles should never happen, especially on a Schutzhund 1 track. I prefer to teach articles away from the track and the earlier in a dog's training the better. You can do these exercises in your living room, your backyard, almost anywhere. Miminal distractions are helpful at first, but later it shouldn't matter.

Taught in the manner illustrated in the accompanying videos the articles will, in many cases, be something the dog enjoys searching for because of the positive associations created early on. Once again, this does not mean we do not use force at some point in the training to proof the dog on articles, but that force is applied in a fair and consistent manner at a time much further along in the dog's tracking career.

Cara, the puppy in the first video, was 4 1/2 months old at the time the video was shot and had never seen an article before. For this clip I had Donna Rink, the owner, hold and hit the clicker, but normally you can do this yourself by holding it in your left hand with the leash. In case you can't see it on the video, a small piece of food is held between my pointer and middle finger, and the article is presented to the dog with my fingers on the bottom side so the puppy cannot see the food.
There are two other videos to be shot, showing the progression from this stage, to downing from the standing position to walking forward (not tracking) and downing on the article, to stabilizing the down, etc. They are coming very soon.

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