winter tracking ??

[kaiservbismarck]

I'm new to "tracking" and my GSD is almost 10 months old. I recently bought the book "tracking from the ground up". Is this somethign that I can start in the winter?? Or should I wait until spring? I'm in a snowy part of Canada (east coast) so I ask because i'm not sure how snow factors into the equation....

thanks so much!!

[poohbearsdad]

Well, if you start now, you will have footprints in the snow and should not need as many flags. It also depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I personally would love the chance to track with Chloe in the snow but none is forecast for the west coast - I do CKC/SAR style tracking.

I've also heard the Schutzhund people don't like tracking in the snow because the footprints can be distracting. Anyone who does schutzhund is more than welcome to deny or verify as I don't do schutzhund myself.

The only thing you may need to concern yourself with is the temperature changes. If the temps are going down, could get more difficult for the dog.

[jay d]

I am very interested in tracking also.You have a head start on me , but I have been told by a trainer to always set up a situation for a puppy to easily "win" or succeed in what you are trying to teach him.So to my way of thinking if there is more than a skiff of snow on the ground,it may affect the lessons in a negative way for a pup,starting out,as opposed to a dog with more understanding of what you are asking him to do.This is my take on it ,but would sure like to also hear from someone doing tracking.....Jay

[Northern GSDs]

What kind of tracking are you hoping to get into?

We do SchH tracking. Personally, I don't track in the winter in the snow (Jax can track in snow just fine - too easily actually, especially with foot step tracking, even if in an area with various old steps in it), although we've done a bit of hard surface stuff (concrete parking lots for example) through the winter (we are already established in tracking). My understanding is that fresh steps in snow can lead to more "visual" tracking over actual scent tracking which can then potentially make "scent tracking" foundation in vegetation, dirt etc more difficult when it is introduced (if the dog has first learned to rely on his or her "eyes" more than "nose"). Perhaps someone here with more experience in this can share their thoughts on this.

If I was just starting out on foundation work with a dog I wouldn't start in snow and I would wait until spring but that's just my preference.

Quote: I personally would love the chance to track with Chloe in the snow but none is forecast for the west coast - I do CKC/SAR style tracking.

How about a trip up to Prince George?? We have LOTS of snow you can play in!

[Kayos and Havoc]

Snow tracking is fun. I track in snow whenever I can. Southeast OK is having one of th snowiest winters on record and I am stuck in Iraq dying to track and I can't.

It is simply another surface for the dog to track on. When faced with using noses over using eyes, dogs will chose nose. I don't buy the dog will become visual if you track in snow, especially when dogs don't see that well, I don't think they see the subtle differnece in color in foot print depressions.

Take advantage of the abilty to see the track yourself and the large amount of scent the moisture holds. This makes it easy for the dog to be successful, easy for you to gain confidence and plain fun.

[Anja1Blue]

I think it depends on what sort of tracking you are doing - if it's just for fun I don't think it matters. If you are competing in SchH, you can't risk doing any kind of training in conditions where the dog's head might come up, because you will lose points in a trial for not having "a deep nose". So no-one I know/knew trained in snow unless we absolutely had no choice.

_________________________________
Susan

Anja SchH3 GSD
Conor GSD
Blue BH WH T1 GSD - waiting at the Bridge

[Kayos and Havoc]

Well, as snow is simply another surfacem much like asphalt, I don't see the risk in the head coming up, but I don't do SchH and I don't care if my dog's nose comes up from time to time as long as he is not air scenting.

How do you guys train on asphalt?

[Anja1Blue]

The risk lies in the track being 100% visible. I'm not saying an occasional track in snow isn't OK, but if you do it on a regular basis sooner or later (mostly sooner), the dog will see it, the head will come up, and he/she will start sight tracking. I've seen it happen..... it just makes it harder, because then you are faced with retraining the dog to keep his head down. Again, that's just a concern for those of us in SchH.

_______________________________________
Susan

Anja SchH3 GSD
Conor GSD
Blue BH WH T1 GSD - waiting at the Bridge

[jesusica]

I don't know anything about starting a dog in snow, but I can tell you I have tracked Flash in snow twice in the last two months (also the only two times I have ever seen a dog track in snow) and there were no issues with his head coming up. In fact, yesterday we tracked in 8 inches of snow and he tracked **** near perfect except when he had TOO deep a nose and would inhale snow. It doesn't seem like there's much difference between dirt and snow tracking as far as being able to "see" the track and I know people who like to do dirt tracking with young dogs to help teach good fundamentals (these are people who expect and regularly get 100 pt tracks). Thinking out loud here, but it seems to me the discrete "pockets" of scent would be similar between dirt and snow but that the scent may be more intense in snow because it is "wet". But my two days (ever) of tracking in snow does not make me an expert!!!

We're about to head out and track in 8 inches of snow yet again, bringing my experience with snow tracking up to a whopping 3 times!

[Northern GSDs]

For asphalt/hard surface tracking I started with scent in a bottle (lots of info on this on the net) but as I'm not all that versed in this type of tracking, there are likely other techniques that may be more "up to date" or effective?? I do know some people use bait when introducing hard surfaces- having done this myself, I did find that Jax was starting to resort more on the sight of the bait (and this was using very small kibble) rather than scenting the track. Having started tracking in natural terrain and postponing the introduction of hard surfaces, I think it was harder to transition to hard surface but since we do SchH, I also wanted a very strong FST foundation in natural terrain since this is what is a) desired in the sport and b) what most SchH tracks are laid in....so I was reluctant to introduce new elements before solid FST in natural terrain was in place. In looking back, I might do things differently, as I think it is harder for a dog to transition to hard surface tracking after doing so much natural terrain tracking???

I do think that varying terrain and conditions bring with it different scents, so I do think there is quite a difference for the dog with respects to learning discrimination of different scents in snow, ice, conrete/asphalt, luch vegetation (even different types of vegetation can produce different crush scents), dirt etc because depending on the terrain, different scents are produced and/or some are stronger than others. And of course as we know, different weather conditions then come into play as well (moisture, temperature etc).

Now I could be way off base with all of this, as I am certainly not a tracking expert by any means, but I do love tracking and trying to understand the theory behind it (which has not been and continues to not be easy given all the different theories about it!!) And then adding in the different types of tracking for different venues....oh boy - it really starts to get interesting!!!

Jax by nature is a trailer rather than tracker, so doing SchH tracking has been challenging to say the least!