Originally Posted By: novarobinI knew they were different, but not sure how. I know it is a silly question but trailing, would that be when they are given the scent of a person they are looking for and follow it? What would air scenting be used for?
Well it is not really all that different to the dog - the problem with only trailing is that after a certain amount of time the trail starts to fade but, if the person is still alive, they are constantly sheeding scent which can be airborne. Early in a search ops you want those trailing dogs out there but as the search gets older (a few days) you want the air scent dogs scannig for scent. The reality is dogs follow scent to its source - trailing dogs air scent and air scent dog trail.
There is a current of air moving from our feet up and over our head. Groups of skin cells called rafts that fall off our body is carried in the current**. Imagine a fountain of scent coming off of our head - some falls to the ground. Some is picked up and carried on air currents, often for great distances. We have had some problems where the dog picked up airborne scent over 1/2 mile away.
When a dog is trailing they are picking up scent mostly from the ground in the general area where the person walked - sometimes not exactly where they walked, as described in a previous post. There is also scent associated with the footfall path (butyric acid from feet, crushed vegetation etc.) but the trailing dog follows the specific scent from that person - alhtough they may use other information in the track but we really have not been able to crawl into a dog's brain to figure out all that is going on.
Airscent dogs can be trained two ways - to find any human scent or to find the scent of a specific person. Those that are scent discriminating use a scent article and are usually started in trailing until they get down the concept that they need to find the person associated with the scent article. An airscent dog is gridded+++ in an area to pick up airborne scent, and they work from areas of lower to higher concentration.
Hope that is interesting. Some good books I like are are Syrotouk, "Scent and the Scenting Dog" which is an old classic, the ARDA book -"Serach and Rescue Dogs, Training Methods" (but they STILL don't acknowledge scent discrimination in the air scent dog ), and the "Cadaver Dog Handbook"
**Did you know that about 80% of the dust in a normal home is dead skin cells?
+++It is not quite as simple as the books make it look unless you live in the flatlands with no trees and a steady wind
- In our area the wind typically changes direction frequently and the mountains in the western part of the state do all kinds of neat things. But the basic concept is you work areas where scent is likely to go - depending on the time of day and weather and terrain - then if nothing is found you do a more detailed grid search .