by Andy Bensing
I have two 13-month-old pups, Addi and Axel, and I am hoping to take to the Deer Search Competition in April. I would prefer to train on open ground but the weather has not been cooperating so I am practicing in the snow. I do like training in the snow as it is a great way to practice line control. Here is the set up I laid out today to run the pups on tomorrow. I laid out 2 lines like this today. I will run each dog tomorrow at 24 hours on their own individual training line and then swap lines and run the pups again at 48 hours on opposite lines.
Blood and hair at the hit site
That looks like a lot of blood doesn’t it? Training in the snow lets you see how much
blood you are really putting down with a VERY small squirt. What you see in this pic is one small
squirt. When I squirt this amount every
other step, about every 5 to 6 feet, it meters out the blood to 8 ounces over
1000 meters, which is the concentration of blood put down for most blood
tracking tests around the world.
Less than 10 meters after the start I try to trick the dog
by putting some blood both ways at the first “Y”. It is only natural for a dog to just continue
straight going the easiest path on the right but the blood line actually bears
to the left through the rougher snow.
The prevailing wind tomorrow will likely be coming left to right so that
may help the dog a bit. Regardless,
right after the start the dog will have a potential issue to deal with. This kind of set up discourages overexcited
fast starts which can get a dog in trouble.
I am approaching another “Y”. I am walking in the left hand tire track and
dripping blood in the right hand tire track.
The wind is from left to right and will certainly be in that direction
tomorrow. By running the blood line up
over the rough snow into the far left
tire track it will set up a great misdirection exercise for the dog
tomorrow. The dog will almost certainly
get sucked to the right for several reasons.
First of all before the “Y” the blood is already in the right track and
the wind will continue to drift scent down that
track quite a distance even after the blood line goes to the left. The dog will also naturally be sucked down
the easy path of least resistance to the right as well. At some point the dog will realize he has
lost the line and will begin to search.
With the wind likely coming from the left at that point, hopefully the
dog will work the check into the wind, and have to cross some deep snow and 2
empty tire tracks to re-acquire the line.
Watching your dog do that work and knowing EXACTLY to the inch where the
line is allows you to learn a lot about your dog and teach the dog a lot as
well if need be.
You can see how I just simply drove around the field a few
times setting up crisscrossing tire tracks.
Another kind of misdirection not at an intersection. I just switch over to another tire track
right on a straight section. Wind from
left to right makes this more difficult.
Here is a tricky turn with a short backtrack. I took the bloodline to the left in the left
tire track past the intersection about 10 meters then brought it back in the
right tire track to the intersection and went to the right. I will enjoy watching the dog work this one
out.
Here I am going from the right tire track, over the rough
snow into the far left tire track.
Notice all the natural deer tracks.
By tomorrow afternoon there will be even more and likely right in the
tire tracks themselves. This should be interesting.
Here is a video
https://vimeo.com/87678126 of my male, Axel, doing the exercise the
next day at 24 hours. I had not checked
the weather forecast closely and as it turned out it rained pretty hard
overnight. That rarely causes a problem
with artificial trails laid on bare ground but it did seem to make a pretty big
difference with the blood line laid in the snow. Axel had very successfully work blood lines
laid in snow tire tracks twice before and had virtually no trouble. As you watch this video you will see that
scenting was much more difficult on this rained on line. Additionally, because
of the rain I had a hard time knowing exactly where the line was at. The rain had washed most of the visual blood
away. Normally when you lay lines in the
snow the next day you can see faint brownish smears where the blood is but the
rain had washed that all deep into the snow.
The snow was pretty frozen when I worked the line. Perhaps that prevented much of the scent from
percolating up out of the snow or maybe it was just gone similar to the effect
rain has on artificial lines laid on bare ground when it rains on that
artificial track before the blood dries on the ground and leaves.
The video is long, 10 minutes, and you don’t have to watch
the whole thing to get the idea, but if you do watch it all take notice of how I
work the dog to balance helping him to be successful and allowing him to make
his own mistakes to learn on his own.
You will see how by handling the dog properly Axel eventually figures
out how to work the much more difficult scenting conditions than he is used
to. By the end of the track he is
nailing it.
When I ran my other dog Addi on her line it was even harder
and she took almost to the end to get it figured out. For whatever reason, the visual blood on the
snow was completely gone. There was only
one or two places on the line where I could see a slight discolor in the snow
and I believe the available scent was even less than on Axel’s line as
well. Because of the poor scenting
conditions I did not run the opposite
lines the next day at 48 hours as planned. That looked like a disaster waiting to
happen.
As you might have read in a previous post, I had laid a
tracking shoe only / no blood line down
in the snow the same day as these lines for my Eibe. Interestingly, the rain on the tracking shoe
line gave my Eibe no trouble at all.
Whether that was because she is an experienced dog and knows how to
adjust quickly to different scenting conditions or tracking shoe scent on snow
holds up better to rain I can’t say. But
it certainly gives raise to some interesting questions.
