Report from the VDD-GNA 20-Hour Blood Tracking Test (VSwP) in Fayetteville, NC

by Andy Bensing

I was entered in two blood tracking tests this past weekend hosted by the Southeast Hunters chapter of VDD-GNA.  VDD-GNA is a German Drahthaar breed club, but they use VSwP (Verbandsschweißprüfung) tests, which are open to any breed dog with an FCI pedigree.  The test was held near Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the Sandhills Game Lands.  The terrain was periodically burned off long leaf pine forest in varying stages of maturity.  The blood lines were laid Friday morning and were run Saturday and Sunday after aging.  All test lines were 1000 meters (.62 miles) long and had three 90-degree turns along the way.  The lines were prepared by using a stick with a small sponge on one end to dab blood on the ground every other step.  Eight ounces of blood were used over the 1000m.  Additionally, six one-inch cubes of lung and two simulated wound beds were distributed along the line as marking points for the dog to indicate.  The judging panel for both days consisted of JGHV judges Lynn Whitely ( UT), Forrest Moore (GA), and Hans Klein (NY).  Mike Fortner (TN) and Ana Barrios-Sosa (SC) served as apprentice judges both days as well.  Many thanks are in order for the judging panel and Jim Smith who served as test coordinator for the event.

Saturday, February 19th, 2011  The 20-Hour Test

On Saturday there were three dogs entered in the VSwP-20.  As the name implies, these test lines were a minimum of 20 hours old.  The first dog up was Barko vom Schlusstein, a 2 ½ year old male Drahthaar owned by Ron Ballard (NC).  Unfortunately, Barko had a difficult start and did not pass the test.

Barko and Ron Ballard

The second dog up was Sabre vom Moorehaus, a 2 ½ year old male Drahthaar owned by Dave Chatellier (NC).  Sabre had a great start and tracked very quickly and accurately right down the line.  Except for leaving the line one time about half way through, his tracking was perfect until the very end.  Unfortunately about 50m from the end of the line Sabre got distracted again and passed the pig laying at the end by 20m, passing on the up wind side.  With just a little better luck had Sabre been drawn to the downwind side of the pig he would very likely have winded the dead pig laying there and easily passed the test.  But luck was not with Sabre and he continued on the distraction 100m past the pig and was called back for a second time.  Dave chose to restart Sabre about 350m back the line at the last place he had marked the line.  Unfortunately Sabre did not re-engage the blood line, got distracted again and received a third call back after leaving the line in the wrong direction over 100m again.  In the VSwP test, as in most of the German style blood tracking tests, you can pass the test with two call backs but a third call back ends the test.

Sabre handled by Dave Chatellier

 
Training/Handling Note: When taking tests, just like in training I believe it is very important to mark your line very frequently. When I am taking a test I use single ply toilet paper that I have cut down to 1 1/3" wide rolls. Most toilet paper is wrapped too loosely for easy handling in the field so I re-roll it more tightly for ease of use when on the line. It is very easy to drape or entangle a foot or so long piece of toilet paper (TP) on a branch as you walk along behind your dog. I typically hang a piece of TP on average every 25 yards or so. I also carry some colored bio-degradable ribbon and use that to mark special things like wound beds or marking points so I am able to easily distinguish them if I need to go back.

If Dave had been marking his line more frequently, he would not have had to go so far (350m) back to restart. The rules say you will get a call back after leaving the line 80 to 100m. Allowing for distance judging error you can be pretty sure that if you restart 150m back from the point where you are called back, you should be at or near the line. Even if you want to go back farther like Dave did, a well marked test line will show a clear direction you should start your dog in at the restart. Dave would never had allowed his dog to go the wrong direction at his second restart if he had marked his line more frequently when he passed by that area the first time. In addition to marking the line when taking a test, I highly recommend using your GPS as well but of the two, the marks you physically put down in the field are most important.

Sabre's track

My dog Eibe and I were the third team up for the day. As soon as we started I could see we were going to have trouble. I will be writing more about it later in another article but in my training line practice in preparation for this trial I had discovered that Eibe had a big problem going back to artificial lines after a very prolific and successful real tracking season. Eibe was no longer focused on just blood when she tracked. Instead she appeared to be looking for a whole "scent picture" of a wounded deer. The problem had gotten better but was not fixed in the three prep lines I had time to do before this test so her bad start did not surprise me.

The first 175m of our line were just plain ugly! Eibe was looking for that wounded deer and practically ignoring the blood. When later I compared our path to the GPS map I got from the judges, I saw that it was even worse than it felt at the time. She ignored blood that she obviously smelled and I read the situation wrong a few times and corrected her while she was on the line thinking she was taking a path that could not possibly be correct. Basically Eibe only followed the test line for 30m at the start and then spent the next 59 minutes searching all around the first 175m of the line looking for a "real deer" scent. Luckily for me she would bump the line occasionally, often enough so as not to get a call back or we might have ended up with only a Prize III. During the 59 minutes I picked her up and restarted her four or five times from various spots and even took a short break and let her swim in the adjacent lake for a minute to cool off physically and mentally.

Eibe was having a lot of trouble on the first part of the line.

 
Speaking of lakes, during this struggle to find a "real" line, Eibe even reverted back to an old problem developed in her first real tracking season in 2009.  On Eibe's first real track ever in 2009 Eibe kicked up a live wounded deer, chased it and eventually found it drown in a pond with only its ear sticking up out of the water.  For two months after that she insisted on swimming out and checking anything that remotely looked like a deer's ear sticking out of the water whenever we passed a pond or lake while tracking.  I had not seen that behavior for over a year but in her frustration on this test she reverted back and tried it twice.  I am sure the judges likely thought she was fooling around but I knew exactly what it was.  After Eibe's searching back and forth with no success for almost an hour I told the judges I was going to cast Eibe out around the messy area we had been stuck in so long in hopes of picking up the line further out in a "clean" area.  As I cast her around the messy area Eibe hit the line and started working it with more intensity than before.  As luck would have it she found an oak leaf with a good smear of blood on it .  At that moment it all finally seemed to click and after 59 minutes of struggling it seemed to dawn on her that the blood was the only thing out there to follow. 
 
Eibe clearly stopped searching for the" real" thing and motored down the bloodline the next 525m in only 15 minutes while making two 90-degree turns with perfect accuracy.  Going as fast as she was Eibe lost some concentration on the line and unfortunately overshot the third turn by 40m.  It took her 20 minutes of searching to work out the check but as soon as she re-engaged the line she again zipped down the blood line with good accuracy the last 300m to the pig.  Total time for the 1000m line was a grueling 1 hour 45 minutes!  

Eibe's entire track

After conferring, the judges awarded Eibe and me a score of "Prize II- Good". They said and I agreed that even though she did not have any call backs, she could not be awarded a Prize I due to the lack of accuracy displayed in the difficult start and the long check at the third turn. Of course I would have liked a nice, smooth, and accurate Prize I performance better but this "ugly" run surely demonstrated to anyone watching that my dog has incredible desire, concentration, and perseverance to keep working on her own and for me no matter how long or hard it gets. When a dog hits a real difficult situation, that's when true character shows through.

In the front-Andy Bensing with Eibe who passed the test with the Prize II performance.

Training/Handling Note: It is a fine line between letting your dog work something out on her own and helping her. Although allowing Eibe to work on her own for almost an hour at the start worked out in the end, in retrospect I should have intervened sooner by taking her all the way back to the start sooner or casting her ahead sooner. Sometimes I get caught up in both training and real life tracking evaluating what a dog can do naturally as opposed to helping her to learn to do it more efficiently right away. As I said, it can be a fine line.
 
I also learned something else from this test. When Eibe was struggling at the start and again at the third turn she reverted back to some bad habits that I thought I had worked out. I mentioned earlier about deer ears sticking out of water but after reviewing my GPS maps after the test is became clear to me that she worked both difficult checks in an old inefficient pattern that she used when she was younger - click here to read more about it. In retrospect I can think of several times this past tracking season where this happened as well. I will re-focus my training this spring on this issue and be quicker  to cast her out and encourage a more efficient search pattern at the checks.

To be continued....Part 2, the 40 hour test