PUPPY TRAIN BLOG

Well I kind of dreaded the thought of tracking with Brena….she is a pup that is not food driven, which just the thought of that made me kind of cringed at the thought of tracking.  The days have been great conditions for tracking, so I decided to see just what I was dealing with on Brena….and because she is not what I would call food driven I did decide to track her in the morning before she was to be fed.  To me a GSD should be a natural tracker, and with Brena 7 months old already and never tracked, I decided to find out just what I was dealing with, really expecting the full thing to be a flop.  I chose purposely not to go by the book for tracking.  I have watched this pup outside, she appeared to be a natural tracker just in seeing her play, run and investigate things the way she did.  Was I right or wrong.. that was more what I was out to see, I wanted to know if I knew what I was seeing in my pup. I purchased a dog food roll of what looked like bologna and cut it into pieces… now with Brena I gave her and the other dogs a piece first to make sure she would even eat it… knowing it was something totally different than anything I tossed them before… all the dogs caught the food, but immediately spit it on the floor… and investigated it first with their nose before consuming it the first time.  Once they ate that piece… it was toss, catch, and eat.  Brena of course does that with everything … even if the others are chowing it down because they know by the smell what it is before it is even tossed.  I was wondering if I would be dealing with my first pup to have to be taught to track with a ball or toy, if she wouldn’t track food.

As I said, I put this pup to the test doing nothing the way it should be…  I laid a choo choo type track dropping the food… did put her tug at the end just beyond the jackpot as an added reward should she get there.  You are supposed to lay a track into the wind, so basically the smell is always being blown in their face..  I purposely used a cross wind with any smell being blown across the track to the right.  I walked back to the house and got Brena… so a bit of an aging of the track as well and walked her out on the farm to the fields of about 8″ high grasses this time of year, where I laid the track.

Keeping a short leash I pointed to the start pad…telling her to track… then helped her understand by slowly moving my finger forward on the track for about 3′ and bam… she was off and tracking… the cross winds didn’t seem to bother her much at all.. and down to the jackpot and wow play tug to boot… she was one happy camper.  I was pleased, shocked and had to repeat the exercise this morning to make sure I saw what I saw…  and yep, this morning all I had to do was start her… same cross winds but she tracked on her own to the jackpot and toy!!   Wheeewwwwwww  I was happy and even more than that is the knowing that what should just be naturally there in her genetics is there!  So Brena is off and running with tracking.  I will get video soon of it, but I need less wind to be able to use my tripod for the camera, it has been to windy the last couple mornings.