Video of wounded moose recovered by Susanne Hamilton and her dachshund Meggie

The use of tracking dogs in the recovery of wounded game has grown and expanded enormously in the last decade. The United Blood Trackers is still gathering numbers of recoveries from its members for the 2015/16 season, but in the previous season UBT members recovered 718 deer, 11 bear, 7 moose and 2 coyotes. 

One of the more active UBT trackers is our very good friend Susanne Hamilton from Maine. In fall 2015 she went on 73 tracks (while holding a full time job) and recovered 31 deer, 3 bears and 1 moose. Eight animals needed to be dispatched. Susanne tracks with Meggie and her sire Buster, who at 13.5 years made ten finds. Readers of this blog are very familiar with Buster, who is an amazing tracking dog. The video below shows Susanne and Meggie on a track of wounded moose. The track was 9-10 hours old and shows very well the spirit of tracking. You might notice that Meggie opens a lot on the track. Susanne said that the terrain was very rough and she moved slowly, too lowly for Meggie, who was getting impatient. There were also a lot of obstacles and Meggie swam at least 20 times. There were also times when Meggie tracked silently but the five minute footage chosen for the video does not reflect it.

Susanne, a top level dressage rider and trainer, is competitive by nature. Her passion for blood tracking is matched by very few handlers. Last fall she went on 6 tracks within 24 hours and recovered 4 of the 6 deer she tracked. This must be some kind of record! I don't think she slept in those 24 hours at all.

Andy and Eibe are getting ready for Tracking Season 2014

By Andy Bensing

With tracking season coming sooner than you think, in addition to brushing up my dog’s tracking skills, I also want to make sure that she is physically and mentally conditioned for the long season.  The early season especially, with the higher temps, can be quite fatiguing. 

This 10 minute video shows a training exercise I did recently.  The main purpose of the exercise was to work on conditioning.  My additional goals were to work on line control and tightening up her check work on turns.  

My seven-year-old Eibe has quite a bit of experience by having taken almost 250 natural calls, and she has done upwards of 120 training lines in her five hunting seasons in the field. However, I still need to do some training with her occasionally to keep her in top form.  If I lay off training completely, she begins to revert to some of her natural tendencies that are not always the most efficient, specifically getting a little loose on her line control and inefficient in working checks.  Interestingly, with just a few exercises like I initially used when she was younger 

http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/2010/04/journey-to-win-part-1.html  http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/2010/05/journey-to-win-part-2-training.html http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/2010/05/journey-to-win-part-3-pre-test-and.html 

she straightens right back out and uses what she had learned in the past.

This particular training line was 1100 meters long in a hardwood forest and aged 72 hours. I used tracking shoes with minimal blood along the way with stretches of upwards of 250 meters with no blood at all.  There were ten 90-degree turns and eight mountain bike/deer cross trails along the way.  The line configuration was actually designed for Eibe’s granddaughter, Addi, who ran the same line at 24 hours two days before. 

Initially I was going to run this line at 96 hours to make it very difficult for Eibe, but when we had a big thunderstorm that dropped almost an inch of rain on the line on the third night I ran it at 72 hours instead.  Sometimes tracking shoe lines do not hold up too well in the rain.  I thought there might be a possibility that the line would be gone but as you will see in the video, conditions were quite difficult but doable. Actually, they were perfect for what I was trying to do.  The point of the difficulty was to make Eibe struggle both physically and especially mentally.   A line of this length (1100 meters) would typically take my dog about 45 minutes or so to run but the minimal scent available created the desired effect and Eibe had to work very hard.  It took her over double the normal time, 110 minutes.

As you watch the video you will see that I put two ribbons on turns and on each turn there is either a wound bed or at the very least I put a pretty good squirt  of blood right under the double flag.  I often do my turns like this in training.  For my young dog it encourages close check work on the turns (which I wanted to refresh Eibe on). If the line were too difficult for Eibe and I needed to help her advance to keep the exercise going, I would absolutely know where I could find a good spot of scent to restart her.  Luckily that did not occur and Eibe required very little handling along the way.  In that same regard I also knew that within 2 or 3 yards of every bike trail/deer trail crossing there was also a little extra blood squirted on the ground.  That extra blood was for Addi to encourage her to cross directly over to the other side of cross trails/roads/paths and check for the line before checking left or right along the cross trail. 

As you watch the video I hope you enjoy Eibe’s careful hard work in the difficult conditions and perhaps gain some insight into how to set up training lines to maximize the learning opportunities for you and your dog when in the field.

The video can be accessed at 

https://vimeo.com/101682014

Eibe 7-24-2014 stamina HD from Andy Bensing on Vimeo.

Evaluating Eibe's nose - part 2

by Andy Bensing

Below is a video of the first part of the evaluation trackdiscussed in the previous post.  Unfortunately, my camera battery ran out before the most challenging part of the exercise, the star and the deer feeder crossing.  You will just have to take my word for it that I was totally surprised how easily she worked through the hard parts, especially the deer feeder area.  Here are some photos from a trail cam I happened to have on the feeder.  Not as good as a video but you get the idea.

Breaking down the snow with my tractor.

Laying the tracking shoe trail in alongside the feeder.

Deer at the feeder overnight in the rain.

Eibe and I tracking past the feeder the next afternoon.

As you can see from the video https://vimeo.com/87635315  I can be pretty sure Eibe’s nose has recovered its ability to smell and differentiate hoof print scent between individual deer.  

Thank you to my sports medicine vet Dr. Robert Gillette   www.vetspecialty.com/staff/bios/84    from the Veterinary Specialty Center in Buffalo Grove IL www.facebook.com/vetspecialty  and my longtime friend and local vet Dr. Sherilyn Allen from Ironstone Veterinary Hospital www.ironstone.net   in Boyertown PA.  Dr. Gillette was able to diagnose that a low thyroid level was the source of the problem and Dr. Allen helped me successfully treat it.  I can’t wait till next September and get my Eibe back in the field at full capacity.

Should blood be used in training dogs to track wounded big game?

By John Jeanneney

Recently this inquiry has come in "My friend and I practice with our dogs once per week on blood tracks. Now I have some people telling me that you should never use blood. What are your thoughts?"  

And then we read on Facebook this statement  "Blood is on the inside of the body and contains no scent. Blood has an odor of Iron, but no scent until it is exposed to the skin. Entirely too much emphasis is being placed on Blood training, when you should be practicing scent training. Many good dogs are being confused by handlers and trainers using blood as a training tool."

Blood is not all that important in tracking real deer. I wish that they didn’t call it blood tracking. Still blood is one of the scents that a dog tracks naturally, and yes blood has scent! I train puppies in the early stages on deer blood that I dip from the chest cavities of the deer that I find. This is not blood that has flowed over the skin of the deer. This blood has plenty of scent and ten week old pups follow it with ease, and they learn to love it. It is a better motivator in the early stages of training than a dragged deer leg. At the end of the blood trails I like to have a piece of deer skin and pieces of liver and heart as a reward.

Speaking of deer legs, the main scent that they produce comes from the interdigital gland between the cloves of each foot. When a deer walks waxy particles from the glands are puffed out onto the ground, and they hold up very well for 24 hours. These interdigital glands have an individual scent for each deer, and they are much more important, over time, than the skin particles that come down from the body of the deer. The tarsal glands are also important, but in my experience they are not as individual as the interdigital, particularly with bucks during the rut.

These German scent shoes are available from the United Blood Trackers at www.unitedbloodtrackers.org 

The favorite advanced training device in Europe is the scent shoe. I use these scent shoes myself, and they are a great motivator for dogs who have had some natural work and are getting bored with that “fake blood stuff”. As you can see from the picture the deer foot is held on the scent shoe with hose clamps in the position of a walking deer. I can walk out a trail on dry forest leaves, and the dog can follow after 24 hours if there is no heavy rain.

Note that the tarsal glands on the hocks are not involved and that skin particles are minimal.
When a dog tracks, it puts together in its mind all of the different scents left by the deer. At the hit site there will be blood, hair, interdigital gland scent, and probably some skin particles too. When the visible blood runs out, the dog keeps going on the combination of other scents left by the deer. Personally, I find that it is effective to introduce a puppy to all the scents associated with the deer. I start with liver drags at five or six week, then blood trails, and finally scent shoe trails.

There is more than one good way to train tracking dogs, and some ways that are not so good. I don’t think that we should get hung up on some theory that training with blood is bad. Blood does have scent, and using it in a squeeze bottle it is a quick and convenient way to lay lines for young dogs. It works! Many thousands of tracking dogs have been trained in Europe and North America using big game blood. Originally, I was skeptical about the scent shoe idea, but now I am sold on it as a part of the training procedure.  A few drops of blood, now and then, adds to the attractiveness. And what you place at the end of the line is very important!

The video shows 11-week-old Urho working a 2.5-hour blood line. No scent shoes were used on this line. Urho was started on liver drags at 5-6 weeks, which were followed at 10 weeks by trails laid with deer blood, with a deer skin at the end. Two days ago he worked the line laid with a dragged deer leg, and  he knew that it would lead to something interesting. Training of tracking dogs involves various techniques. Urho's future training will include more advanced blood work and lines laid with scent shoes.

Dog days of summer are here

What a hot and humid summer it has been! When we bought this piece of land 15 years ago we never anticipated that we would be using a small pond as much. Anyway, few days ago I read that so far we have had 10 days with temperatures above 90F (32C) so by now the number must be at least 12. And this is just a middle of July.

Joeri gets to the pond on a regular basis, and I thought that a short video would show his mobility 10.5 months after the incident with a herniated disc. He is not 100% yet, and he might never be, but for sure he moves around pretty well and he really enjoys himself. He has always been a a very special dog and it is deeply satisfying to see him living his life to the fullest.

Video shot at the United Blood Trackers Trackfest in Wisconsin

WQOW TV: Eau Claire, WI NEWS18 News, Weather, and Sports

Videos of young dachshund puppies tracking fresh deer liver scent

By John Jeanneney

We use deer liver drags in our early puppy work, and we call it “early conditioning” rather than serious training. The scent lines produced by the fresh liver drags are easy for the puppies to follow and the puppies develop an enthusiasm to use their noses to find something good to chew on.

In early work on fresh, easy lines we prefer the liver drag to a fresh blood line. The liver leaves good scent but there is no fresh blood on the grass for the puppies to stop and lick instead of moving ahead. The pups also learn to identify the deer liver scent on the ground with the good chew on that same liver that we have left at the end of the line.

Deer livers are easy to collect during the hunting season. Most hunters seem ready to leave the liver for the coyotes, so I scoop it up, along with the heart, and carry it all home in a gallon Ziploc bag. I collect the blood at the same time for more advanced work.

There is some good scientific research to support this sort of early conditioning. When very young mammals, from human babies to baby mice, are stimulated in a certain way, the brain circuitry responding to that stimulation grows denser and more efficient. It’s possible, in theory at least, to improve future brain function beyond the level of simple genetic inheritance. This seems to work for us!

To see what our puppies have been up to go to our puppy journal at http://borntotrackpuppies.blogspot.com/

Blog on wirehaired dackels and a video on dachshunds

For those who'd like to learn more about European dachshunds from perspective of an American living in Europe, this is a new blog to follow: http://whdackel.blogspot.com/. You will find a link to the blog in our blogroll.

Julie Weidner is a graduate student from Wisconsin, who currently lives in Switzerland, and she has acquired two European wirehaired dachshunds.  We got connected through our blog, and it looks like we are on the same wavelength.

I like Julie's post about dachshunds in the media. If you have 87 minutes to spare, watch the video she refers to at

http://videos.arte.tv/fr/videos/a-poil-dur-a-poil-long-a-poil-ras--7302468.html (French) or

http://videos.arte.tv/de/videos/dackel-kleiner-hund-ganz-gross--7302468.html German)

Julie's comments about the video are right on the money. If you watch the video, you'll see Antonio Palladini, a prominent breeder from Italy http://www.val-vezzeno.it/. Tommy's sire Skuleskogens N Boris is owned by Palladini (Boris was bred in Sweden).

Even if you do not speak German or French (there is no English version as far as I know) the video is worth watching just to see how dachshunds are raised and handled in various countries. I know for sure I would not want to be a dachshund in Japan. I think around 7:30 minutes into the video you will see a dachshund playing with a young lion and standing its ground!

 

Enjoy!

Finding a deer and getting a deer is not exactly the same thing!

Andy Bensing says "Here is a narrated GPS video of my track from Tuesday night. We did not "get " the deer but the video gives some interesting insight into what blood trackers do and the kind of things deer do as well.

Whenever I come home from tracking my wife always asks the question, "Did you find him?"  Sometimes my answer has to be qualified by using the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky approach, "It depends how you define, FIND HIM."  My wife means did we find the dead deer but as all blood trackers know, especially trackers who have to keep their dogs on a leash like most of us, finding them and getting them are often two very different things.  This GPS video is a good example of finding him but not getting him.  Heck, we saw him 5 times but couldn't get him.  The video shows what non-mortally wounded deer can sometimes do and explains some of the strategy I use to determine when to give up."

Did You Find Him? Yes but........ from Andy Bensing on Vimeo.

A mechanical broadhead produces unexpected results. A blood tracking dog finds the deer.

by Andy Bensing

 

Sometimes the Hunter Doesn't Lie, but Equipment Does, Another Live Recovery for Eibe

This video documents an interesting call I had this week. The hunter was using a crossbow at about 12 yards. Of course he did not see the bolt hit the deer but he pointed right to a quartering away heart shot when he showed me on my deer diagram. I did not believe him or I would not be there. There was almost no blood or hair to start the track and the bolt was not recovered so there was little to go on in figuring out what had happened. As you will see in the video, the hunter was exactly right. He hit the deer at a spot that should have been a perfect heart shot. Watch the video to see what really happened after the bolt impacted the deer.

Video - https://vimeo.com/49649786

 

 

Mechanical Broadhead Failure from Andy Bensing on Vimeo.

When this video was posted on Facebook, it generated quite a few comments. John Jeanneney wrote: "Bowhunters should be aware of the limitations of mechanicals. There are high risks on angle shots to the rib cage. In this deer case a good fixed blade head would have been much more likely to penetrate at that angle. Some mechanicals are better than others, but they all seem to have trouble passing though rib bones.  This makes for tough eyetracking, although it is not a problem for a good tracking dog that can follow the interdigital scent of that particular deer. As a tracker I have far more calls from hunters who shot mechanicals including Rage. Of course I don't have statistics on how many hunters use each type of head."

First successful recovery of the 2012 tracking season by Andy Bensing and Eibe: Spike buck in velvet in Maryland

In some states deer hunters have started their pursuit of whitetails already and we received Andy Bensing's  first report of successful recovery in Maryland. A big thank you to Andy for such a nice presentation of the call. Make sure that you check out his video.

By Andy Bensing

I headed out Friday night to take what sounded like a liver/gut shot so the odds were real good of recovering it. Normally I would let it sit until morning but with the temperature almost 80 overnight, a high fox population and the deer being gut shot, the meat would likely be gone by morning. I gave it 5 hours after the shot before tracking it with the dog. The hunter could find no blood trail at all. He saw deer run up over a hill 70 meters in a field but when he went to the crest, the deer was not visible down the other side. Hopefully I'd find him just inside the woods on the other side of the field.

It turned out that the buck was shot too far back just in front of the back leg.  Eibe jumped him from his initial wound bed about 285 meters from the hit site having found only a few drops of blood along the way.  After we put him out of his wound bed, we slowly tracked him for another 165 meters getting within a few feet of him 3 times until the fourth time when he did not get up and I was able to dispatch him.

An interesting note when you look at the map. Notice how he goes basically in a straight line. When we track we see this all the time. Severely wounded deer most of the time head as directly as they can for a place they feel safe, typically their bedding area, usually regardless of the difficulty of the terrain. Also notice how each time we jumped the deer he kind of cut back on us but then re-oriented himself to the original line of travel.

I had some interesting dog work from my Eibe on this line after we jumped the deer. I wanted to track slowly and carefully so as not to push the deer and keep him as calm as possible to make it easy to slip up to him and finish him off. Of course at the first jump my Eibe went crazy but I was able to calm her down with an "easy" command. After about 50 yards and for the rest of the hot track she stayed almost completely quiet and did not pull crazily but just tracked very slowly and matched MY slow careful pace. This enabled the hunter and me to walk very quietly and scan the darkness ahead with our lights and get close to the deer several times.

Another interesting point. Neither the hunter nor the landowner could reach the neighbor on the one side before we set out to track. I always try to get that done before I ever leave the house to meet the hunter. I knew that property lines might end up stopping this track but with the deer being gut shot there was a good chance it would not travel too far. It ended up being real close but the deer stayed on the landowner's property and died just a few feet short of the property line. It's frustrating but several times a year I end up having to give up on deer when we either can't locate the landowner or sometimes they won't grant permission. Check out in this photo I snapped with my iphone how close we almost were to loosing this one! Of course we could have waited until morning if it had crossed the line and went up to the neighbor's house but the deer would have been rotten and eaten by foxes. Just glad the deer died on the correct side of the line.
 

 

Here's a video depicting the recovery process for this call. There's some video of the dispatch of the deer with a spear at the end that you might find educational.

Spike Buck in Velvet Recovery https://vimeo.com/49090672

While puppies play we observe and learn about them

Today it has been raining, sometimes heavily, but we managed to put puppies out for a couple of hours. It's a challenge to keep puppies occupied and their brains challenged. To provide enriched environment for the pups and learn something about them, today we attached several small balloons to their pen and watched their response. Some played with the balloons, some were not interested. Some were persistent, others were not. Some learned something during the play and adjusted their strategies.

I learned quite a bit about individual pups while watching them for just few minutes.

Tracker Barbie spreads her wings!

If this video does not make you smile, I don't know what will!  It is obvious that Barbie has had some serious experience in the field. Many thanks to Willette Brown! You made my day.

Happy Thanksgiving to All of You!

Andy Bensing's Tracking Video "GPS Pursuit: Don't Quit too soon"

GPS Pursuit - Don't Quit Too Soon from Andy Bensing on Vimeo. 

This is a fascinating video that Andy Bensing put together of a deer call he had last weekend. Andy wrote: The deer was gut shot and the hunter did not wait the amount of time I suggested before tracking so we ended up pushing the deer for a total of 4 ½ miles over an almost 3 hour period. The first part of the video shows via GPS mapping the route the big buck took in trying to evade its pursuers and the last 5 minutes shows the hunter and I enjoying the celebration of the completed mission. I think this video gives good insight into what wounded deer sometimes do and how dogs as well as handlers have to sometimes think and strategize to get the job done.

Proofing Search Patterns - seeing into my dog's mind's eye

By Andy Bensing

After our last training line 2 weeks ago I had a good feeling that Eibe had developed a clear picture in her head of how to recognize dead spots and efficiently work them out.  As mentioned in previous articles, I also believe that for some time now she actually recognizes back tracks as soon as she smells that the line has doubled over itself.   I set today's training line up as a proofing exercise to see if my assumptions were correct.  Since we had been focusing lately on dead spots and had not done any backtracks for quite a while my plan was to lay out a dead spot on the line to assure that she was thinking about dead spots. and then 150m later go right into a backtrack. This way I could see if she would recognize the back track and work it in her usual backtrack efficient way or would she initially think it was another dead spot and work it that way.  I also threw in a couple of sharp 90 degree turns to compare her style on them as well.  Overall, the line was 1050 meters long laid with tracking shoes and a squirt of blood on the ground every 50 steps or so and I aged it overnight (15 hours). 

Click on the image

I am trying a new technology (for me) with this article so check out the videos below.  The videos show how Eibe ultimately worked through the above exercise but also show some of the great value in using your GPS and associated desktop software while blood tracking both on training and natural lines.  The videos are not of my dog but rather they are taken from my computer screen and show how you can evaluate you and your dog's actions when you get back home after tracking.

• Dead Spot Work  
• Backtrack Work  
• Two 90's Work  
• Whole track video   

A video of Ray and Roscoe's track from last October

Ray Holohan from Illinois sent us a link to the video showing him and Roscoe tracking. Thanks Ray!

"This is a video of Rosco on a successful deer track last October 2010. The video was made by Mike Wise a Southern Woods and Water TV prostaff production. This was a night time track about 5 hours old. When I got there they did a little interview with me and Rosco. The track started where they had followed the blood to where it entered a large switch grass field of 700 acres. The quality of the track is poor due to insufficent lighting. As you look at the video you will see me making an adjustment to Rosco's harness, I missed a leg hole ,"whoops" . They had 3 guys following me looking for blood. Rosco tracked for 3 hours about 2 1/2 miles when we jumped the deer out of a woundbed in a dried creek bottom. The deer ran on to the adjacent property where we did not have permission to track. We did not recover the deer, but Rosco did a hell of a good job. After the track we went and looked at the video of the shot frame by frame and it looked like the arrow slid along the shoulder blade and into the neck area not hittng any vitals. A little bit of this video would have appeared on TV had we recovered the deer."

Dachshunds on the rocks

by Andy Bensing

There are many more things to developing a great blood tracking dog than just the dog's ability to follow a blood line. One of those things is the dog's comfort in any environment. I had my seven-month-old Atlee out the other day for a walk in the woods, and I discovered that he had a little trouble psychologically with some large rocks. I climbed up and over some boulders on the way out of the woods Atlee seemed a little hesitant to climb up on them to follow me. He eventually did but he was not comfortable. With that in mind, it was a beautiful afternoon here today in Pennsylvania so off to the rockiest place I knew to get Atlee comfortable climbing on big rocks. I took my other young dachshund, six-month-old Buddy, along too. Buddy is as sure footed as a mountain goat so I figured he would help motivate Atlee as well.

Dachshunds on the Rocks from Andy Bensing on Vimeo.


Dachshunds on the Rocks- Cliff Climbing from Andy Bensing on Vimeo.

Teddy Moritz added a comment with a picture:

I agree that pups should experience many surfaces while they are young. Makes them more assured as adults when hunting. You know where I live so rocks and logs and hills and streams are constant challenges to my pups. I think scenting a live animal and blood tracking are the real 'variable surface tracking' tests. My dogs have to track a rabbit anywhere it goes...water, asphalt, rocks, woods, etc., just like a blood tracking dog. Balancing on rocks, climbing over them and going under them give a pup confidence and they learn to use their bodies.

Here's Garmin at four months learning to negotiate a rock pile where the rabbit ran.

Advanced Blood Tracking Training: Wound Bed Indication, Dead Spots, and Search Pattern

by Andy Bensing

Eibe's Training Line March 2, 2011

After a successful weekend at the North Carolina VSwP I am continuing to train Eibe in anticipation of the Deer Search Competition coming up in April. The purpose of this training exercise was to work on wound bed indication, dead spots, and efficient search patterns. Additionally I wanted to reassure myself that Eibe's problem of ignoring artificial blood scent and looking for a real wounded deer "scent picture" was gone.

The training line consisted of the following:

1. 1000 meter blood line was laid out in CRP field using about seven ounces of blood.

2. Six 12-inch-diameter wound beds with a clump of bloody hair in the center.

3. Two offset "Dead Spots" were created, one 30m and one 20m in length.

4. A little extra blood was squirted at corners.

The video is long, 48 minutes, but with all the wound beds, turns and dead spots there is pretty much some type of training technique being demonstrated every few minutes. The highlights of the exercise are as follows:

1. It is obvious right from the start that Eibe is now having no problem tracking just blood.

2. Wound bed indication improved as the exercise progressed.

3. I continued to confirm a suspicion I had that Eibe will attempt to use human track scent to advance the line when no blood scent is present (I began to believe this during my parking lot training exercise). At the 30m offset dead spot she followed my bloodless path 25m past the last blood until she turned around and began to search. At all the turns, where of course I turned, that she overshot, she went straight 10m or less before beginning the check. At the 20m dead spot I made a turn when I laid it, and when Eibe got to the beginning of the dead spot she made the bloodless turn exactly as I had done. She slowed down in the void and was obviously looking for blood but clearly was following my scent. When she hit the blood again at 20m she kicked back into a faster speed. It was obvious that she was looking for blood but using my path to get there. As I mentioned in the video, I do not think this will be a problem in testing or in real life tracking. Actually, it might even be a help in taking a test.

4. Eibe's performance on the overall exercise was great but it clearly showed my future training needs to emphasize ingraining efficient search patterns.

Eibe - Sign Indication, Dead Spots, and Search Patterns from Andy Bensing on Vimeo.

A map of whole blood line - click to enlarge.

The above expanding concentric circles were a directed search initiated by me to teach the pattern.

More Spring Training 3/16/2011

As I continued my spring training with Eibe today I ran a very similar line as described above but this time it was a little longer and was in a hardwood forest as I expect the Deer Search Competition to be held in. It was a 24-hour-old line and there was about ½ inch of rain on it overnight.

The whole exercise went very well and I continue to build my confidence in her understanding that we are not tracking real deer right now. There were 3 highlights from today's work:

1. Eibe's speed is picking up without sacrificing accuracy. I think now that she is more comfortable smelling for just blood, she is making fewer unnecessary checks and the checks are quicker. She tracked the first 1000m of today's line in 33 minutes and that included 9 minutes working out the second Dead Spot.

2. Completely on her own Eibe located, stopped, and stood over all five small, six-inch-diameter wound beds I had laid out. I think this was the cleanest series of indications she has ever given to date.

3. I did run into a logistical problem in my attempt to work on teaching more efficient search patterns. When I laid the line and created the Dead Spots to use for teaching an expanding concentric search pattern I stopped the blood and walked to the spot where I would restart the blood in a way that was not direct. I hoped that Eibe would not follow my human scent trail. Well, that did not work as she very quickly and easily found my trail and followed it to the blood as you can see on these two GPS diagrams below. I have a different layout in mind for trying to prevent her from using my human scent next time. I will let you know how it works. One thing is absolutely for sure. After seeing how she worked these Dead Spots this time, there is no doubt in my mind that when the blood is gone on an artificial line, she will follow human scent if it is there in expectation that it will lead to blood again. She uses the human scent as a guide. She follows it slowly a few feet then checks to the left and right a few yards then moves forward on it a few feet again. When she hits the blood, she then takes off quite quickly.

Remi's blood tracking training

Justin Richins from Utah sent us this video a couple of weeks ago. Justin, I hope that by now you see more signs of spring. For those who missed earlier posts on Remi (Remy von Moosbach-Zuzelek, a son of Joeri and Gilda) -- he is a wirehaired dachshund, and in the video he is just over 9 months old. He has done really well so far in real tracking and training on artificial lines.

The video shows Remi's work on a line, which is 17.5 hr old, laid with scent shoes and blood, and it includes a lot of sharp checks. I think it is another stellar performance. Remi has some very minor difficulties, and Justin analysis and conclusions are sound. Thank you Justin for sharing!