As soon as he possibly can, the handler stops pointing out the baits and the footsteps, and lets the dog practice locating them on its own. However, he still remains very close to the dog, keeping a short leash (two to three feet) and using it to guide the animal straight down the track and also to keep it moving slowly, steadily and exactly on top of the footsteps.
When he begins to reduce the bait on the track he does so very slowly and gradually, taking great care to ensure that the dog still takes scent in every footstep.
It is important that the dog begin working on its own as quickly as possible. If it learns to follow a track by letting its handler show it every step, the dog will never develop the ability to work out a track on its own. Instead it will, as many dogs do, learn an amazingly clever way of reading its handler in order to tell where the track is. These animals track very well as long as their handlers know where the track is. When they do not, as in Schutzhund II and III, the results are disastrous.
As soon as the dog begins to show a good understanding of tracking, the handler should begin to give it a little more leash, and thus the opportunity to work on its own and solve the track independently. However, the handler must make sure that the dog solves it the way we want it to: by tracking precisely from footstep to footstep. The handler can accomplish this by working carefully with the line. When the animal begins to veer away from the footsteps, he increases his resistance on the line, so that it is harder for the dog to move forward. When the animal comes back onto the track the handler decreases resistance, so that the animal finds it easier to move forward when it is tracking correctly.
The handler should be in no hurry to move back away from his dog to the end of the thirty-foot long line. Many trainers advance with their dogs to the point that the animals are correctly working full-size Schutzhund III tracks before they ever use anything longer than a six-foot leash for training sessions.
However, when he does judge that it is time to move back from the dog and let more line out, the handler must do so very gradually. Also, he does so dynamically. For example, he might let the dog go out twenty feet ahead on an easy leg of the track. But later, when he anticipates a challenging change in terrain or some other difficulty he will gradually work his way back up the line so that, if the dog has any difficulty, he will be close by to help the animal.
In order to make it easier to keep track of how much line he has given the dog to work on, the long line can be knotted at fifteen feet. When working the dog on twenty or thirty feet of line, the handler should keep the line taut to keep the animal moving forward, to improve his sensitivity in reading the dog and to keep the animal from entangling itself in the line.
In Schutzhund II and III tracking tests, the track is not laid by the handler, but by a tracklayer designated by the hosting club. In spite of this, the handler will sometimes have a sketchy idea of where his track goes. Sometimes he will even be able to see footprints. However, quite frequently in competition the handler will not have the faintest idea where the track leads—whether the first turn is to the left or the right, whether the second leg is 100 yards long or 300, etc.
This does not mean that the handler cannot do anything to help his dog. On the contrary, how he chooses to follow the dog will make all the difference in terms of whether or not the animal commits itself to the track. For example, when the dog is having trouble on a turn, the first thing that it will do is indicate loss of track. Then it will begin to cast about for the new direction of the track. If the dog moves off uncertainly in the wrong direction, showing in every line of its body that it is making a guess, and the handler blithely steps off after it, the handler will soon find himself being taken for a walk. On the other hand, if the dog commits itself confidently and surely to the correct direction, but the handler refuses to budge—stops it with the line because he lacks trust in his dog or is unable to read the animal’s indication that it has found the track—then the animal will quickly decide that it must have been wrong, that the track must lie in the other direction. This will not only result in failure of the track, but it will also harm the dog’s track sureness and confidence in its ability. Therefore, it is vital that the handler be able to read his dog, that he have the ability to see unmistakably when the animal is on the track and also to recognize when it is lost.
During training for turns, the handler should take notice during each practice session of how his dog indicates loss of the track. The most common indicators are: tail raised or wagged, nose and head elevated suddenly, obvious confusion or circling, etc. When he returns to his vehicle after a training session, the handler should make written notes in a tracking journal about how the dog made its indications of loss of track or changes in direction. These observations will become essential when the animal begins working unknown tracks and the handler must rely entirely on his dog’s capabilities in order to get it through to the end of the track.
In tracking training one idea is paramount: The dog must always be successful. It must always obtain gratification (by completing the track correctly and then receiving its reward). Furthermore, the dog must rely entirely on itself to solve the track, rather than depending upon its handler to get it through any difficulty.
Therefore, the handler must carefully monitor the dog’s progress. He must accurately evaluate what the dog is capable of doing today and also predict what it will be able to do tomorrow. Each time that he takes the dog out to track it should be with the specific purpose of improving their performance as a team. Sometimes he does this by laying a track that the dog can easily manage, so that the animal practices tracking perfectly and gains confidence. On other occasions he improves performance by preparing a problem for the animal, some small change in one of the variables that determine the difficulty of the track—wind direction, frequency of the baits, age, changes in terrain or vegetation, etc. However, the handler must accurately predict what the dog is capable of doing on any given day so that the animal is neither discouraged nor forced to depend upon its handler to get it to the end of the track. The challenge is to plan each track in such a way that it is difficult enough to teach the dog something, but not so difficult that the animal cannot solve it itself with minimal intervention by its handler.