When can I begin tracking? This is a frequently asked question from novice trainers - to which my answer is always the same - today. You can begin with a puppy as young as 8 weeks. Clearly, however, a young pup of 3 or 4 months will not have the ability to concentrate the same way a one year old might, i.e., his attention span will be considerably less. This has to be taken into consideration when designing the daily exercises. On the plus side, the imprinting of correct behavior in a young puppy will give you a wonderful foundation for later work. Please note -- if you feed a young puppy three times a day, then that is how many scent pads you will have to do, spread out over the course of the day - do not over feed!!! If you feed twice a day, then do 2 pads, one early and one late. If the dog already only eats once a day, then you're all set.
We will start with oversized scent pads. These are areas approximately 3 ft square which you define by stepping all around that area, placing food liberally throughout. How? In order to build (and use) drive for tracking we will do several things at once. First, make sure your dog is hungry. Second, we will not be using the treats we discussed earlier, but a fully balanced food (so the dog gets proper nutrition), preferably a frozen one like K9 Kravings or Oma's Pride. This frozen food should be cut into small pieces. You can use one of your plastic containers to carry them in. This food will probably have more scent than the treats you will use later on and that is okay. We want the dog to come to the exercise, put his head down and hunt for the food. Take a start flag to an unmarked area of short grass. Do not use tall grass where the area you define will be visually marked, like the grass in the small photo on the home page as this will only encourage/permit the use of the dog's eyes, which we do not want! The traditional method of teaching this exercise is to walk up to the area you are going to use and them jump a few feet forward to start the pad, thereby allowing for the making of a clean box. After you finish putting down the food you jump off and walk away. The method I encourage is similar with one important difference. (see below)
I recommend hiding much of the food, thereby forcing the puppy to use his nose down deep to get the food while at the same time discouraging the use of the eyes. Most people scuff in the pad quite hard, feeling this will help the dog. I disagree. A moderate amount of pressure from your feet is enough. I will not go into the ability of a dog to discriminate scents (undisturbed grass from trampled), that kind of information is readily available on the Internet. Suffice it to say, it far exceeds anything we can understand, but if you need an analogy it might be something like us being able to hear a whisper - a mile away. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but not by much. The point is we want the dog to learn to discriminate the areas that have the food (footsteps/pad) from those that don't (everything else).
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