I get more questions on corners than perhaps any other aspect of tracking. What is the best way to lay it, should I bait it, double or triple lay it, and so on? And they are all reasonable questions.
If you've been following along the sequencing I've laid out, hopefully, you will have come to see that with discipline, planning and practice, it is not too difficult to get your dog to follow a trail.
Schutzhund is a sport where thinking and planning is critical to success. Every aspect of your dog's performance and training should be thought out ahead of time, problems analyzed and solutions tried -- which in turn are successful or not. When you fail (notice I did not say the dog fails) you must reevaluate two things at least -- what you are doing and your dog. Is your assessment correct, did you execute your plan poorly, did you overestimate your dog's ability, and so on? The careful planning and execution of corner training can makes the difference between a dog that will pass with an excellent score and one that will cause you to take antacid every morning the week before trial because you are worried he will not "make the corner".
Now take a moment and look out your window. For those of you with no window, visualize. Where, in nature, are there straight lines of considerable length? What manner of prey (rabbits, etc.) runs in a straight line? Please e-mail me if you come up with any because as far as I can tell the answer to these questions is - none. Yet most of us feel more comfortable when our dog is working on a straight leg, which is a less natural path for them to follow, and worry more when he comes to a corner or curve. In fact, long straight legs are one of the most difficult things for a dog to do and maintain concentration.
Why is the "nature" thing important to us? Because it bears remembering in relation to our teaching corners, which can become more of a problem for us than for our dogs. I teach corners very early on in the dog's tracking career because I believe that the trail is the trail, whether it curves, makes a right angle or has a break in it and then continues, and having the dog learn this while you are building your foundation is the correct thing to do.
We have already begun corner training by doing gentle serpentines with our dogs. Over time these should be accentuated so the track, in parts, begins to take on more an "S" shape. This track component is an important one for several reasons. First, it forces your dog to continually work to stay on the track and helps prevent the laziness that can come from him expecting a boring straight line. Second it helps slow him down because he cannot really anticipate where the track is going (as he may with a straight line). However, when laying "S" shapes or sepentines it is critical that you know where your track is at all times, and in this case is not always that easy.
A few things to get out of the way first:
I do not believe in laying food in every footstep of a corner, or in any footsteps on a corner! This is leading the dog through the corner, as if turning were something "unnatural". It is not, they do it all the time. By placing food in the footsepts of the corner you actually disrupt the dog's tracking, allowing him to eat and breaking his concentration. Why would you want to do that? If anything, you should teach him that after he works through the corner he gets the reward ( finding food on the track), not in the middle of it. So, for me, this method of laying food in the footsteps of the corner, proposed my some very well known trainers, can often be counterproductive.
But laying food a short distance after the corner presents other problems. Dogs taught that way are often seen to speed up after the corner, racing to get to their food. So this is only marginally better because it creates yet another problem, one which you will lose points for in trial (i.e., change of speed after a corner, and most often this is a speed up, not a slow down). Does this mean I never put food after a corner? No, but I do something after corners that helps keep the pace steady, forces concentration and allows for a reward. What is it? Use a track component - place an article. For the dog it becomes -- make the corner and search for your article, which is sure to come (it will be close most of the time and it will be there much of the time - not always in either case) - get your reward.
Double laying, triple laying, stomping it in - oh, no. Many trainers advocate "helping" the dog follow the corner by doing these "things", as if the dog does not have the natural ability to follow the trail if it does not go straight ahead of him. Let's examine these "methods" of helping our tracking partners. My first and most important question is "What do they all have in common?" The answer is simple. They all change the scent characteristic of the track. By definition, they must - unless the whole track is double or triple layed, or stomped in. They create a "hot" spot and your dog may learn to identify these with corners. (And this is not how corners are laid in trial -- at any level. In fact, at the New England Regionals in 2006 I watched every handler but one in the Schutzhund 1 lose many points for doing some variation of these at their corners!) So, in an effort to "help" your dog, you actually create a condition that is in an odd way, more difficult for him. You are asking him to make the corner when the track scent changes, i.e., reidentify the track, follow it, then reidentifiy it after the corner when you go back to what you were doing before you tried to help your dog. Seems a bit wrong headed. What might be better is to just lay the track normally so there is no change in the scent and concentrate more on having trained your dog to correctly follow the track to begin with. Build concentration and accuracy and corners will be less problematic.
If you have been doing your homework, you should be at a point where your dog is working for food placed at intermittent, random intervals on the track. This is a prerequisite for doing corner training in earnest and I do not recommend anything beyond 45 degrees until you have accomplished that.
Three-step rounded corners, five-step rounded corners, square corners - which is best? This is the wrong question. You have to train for both rounded and square corners as you never know what you will get in trial (except at the Schutzhund 1 level) - regardless of what the rules say. In general, rounded corners are easier for the dog to navigate and square corners give you more information in training and keep the dog on its toes (so to speak) with a apparant abrubt end to the track. You should look at corners as an opportunity - for your dog to learn and gain confidence and for you to gain trust in his abilities. Of course, this presupposes you know exactly where they are.
So - how do we begin?
Of course the answer is - you already have, simply by bringing your dog along this far. Your dog should be doing the simple basic tracks oulined in First Tracks, at least fifty to seventy-five paces long and is indicating articles on the track!!! Remember, for your dog, if taught correctly, articles are a good thing and you have already incorporated them into his basic straight leg tracking. If you watch the videos on this page you can clearly see how articles are used for reinforcing the correct behavior at corners. But let's back up a little and get the dog turning.
Lay your track as normal. Along the way find a spot with a clear ground cover mark (watch the third video and you will see what I mean, although Pax does a 90 turn there), or you may use a skewer if you have to. Angle off at about 10-15 degrees. The wind should be at your back for this track. Not into your face or cross track. About six to eight paces after the angle, place your food in three successive steps then continue on as usual, articles, etc. You should be relatively close to the dog, a few paces back at this time.
We now come to another controversial subect in tracking. What to do if the dog does not follow the track, i.e., wanders off to investigate something, gets lost, fringe tracks, etc.. Some trainers believe you should just allow the dog to refind the track if they go off. And I agree with this -- but (and this is a very important but) only after the you are confident the dog fully understands the idea of refinding the track. This refinding is a critical skill the dog must have to work at more advanced levels of tracking since you will not know where the track is. The process of achieved a motivated confident tracking dogs is very much built during the process of achieving this. And it is a bit of a balancing act. Let me give you an extreme example of what not to do.
A friend of mine had a dog who could follow the trail but was not highly motivated. He tried many things but could not get the dog to track consistently. He finally sent the dog to a well known trainer to try and fix the problem. The trainer's approach was to starve the dog then track him for his meals. Not an uncommon technique. His standard method is to stay half a tracking leash back from the dog and exert absolutely no influence on the dog. If the dog did not refind the track or finish it he did not eat for the day. I watched several videos of the dog meandering around at corners, circling (a very hard habit to fix) tracking in a lackadasical manner, not finishing half the tracks and in general making no real progress (considering he was sent there already knowing how to track). What went wrong was that the trainer misread the problem. The dog lacked motivation to begin with and then received no guidance to gain confidence and really learn his corners. When confronted with a "problem" the dog worked right at the edge of shutting down. This dog is a good example of using a viable technique at the wrong time in a dog's training career. Does this mean he should have "guided" the dog around the corners? No. For this dog the corners, and his tracking in general needs a complete rebuild. Remember what I said, you need some form of motivation - and it can be almost anything. I will be working with this dog and his handler this spring and will be posting videos of our progress.
This brings us back to the issue of what you do when you begin teaching change of direction. In essence 10 degrees or 90, you will start the same way. When you lay that first angle you must know exactly where it veers off and where it goes. If the dog does not follow the footsteps there are several things you can do (and remember, this is at the beginning stages). First - do not let the dog circle. This is a point loss in trial and a very hard habit to break once the dog establishes it as a way of tracking. Second, give him a second to refind on his own and priase when he continues on the track, and remember, his food reward is only half a dozen paces ahead. If he moves with commitment away from the turn (i.e., not just a headcheck, which is fine) - - you should issue a firm but not overpowering "Pfui". The mild shock of this may break his concentration at first, and this is okay. Quickly follow with your search command and praise when he refinds the track. We must be very careful here not to create a stressful condition in the dog. Why? Because we do not ever want the dog to quit on the track when he feels pressure or loses the track, because both of these will happen to him from time to time. We want the dog to understand that losing the track is no big deal, that it is his job to refind it and continue on, and that is exactly what you want. As he learns that losing it happen from time to time and that it is no big deal, you will see his confidence grow and a more automatic response to loss of track, i.e., a quick effort to refind it. I use an alternative command, "Find it" when the dog does get lost, as opposed to my tracking command "such" (phonetically "sook"). Then I continue with his tracking command. In trial you are only able to use your tracking command at the start and restarts, not while the dog is working the trail. (Whenever the dog goes off track (or stops to eat food) the handler should aways stop as well. Do not keep walking and do not tug at the dog or otherwise try to influence him - other than verbally for now-- if you need to. See various videos on the site.)
So when do we allow our dog to get lost and refind entirely on his own - an absolutely necessary skill for him to have? NOT YET.
more coming soon
