When are you ready?

It's one of the hardest questions in dog (or horse) sports--and my answer is (mostly) tracking specific. When are you ready to certify, when are you ready to enter a test?

Let's back up a bit, because I want to clarify something. I've said, and will continue to say, that the only tracks my dogs run that don't have food on them are their certification track, and their test tracks. HOWEVER, that means one food drop somewhere along the way on a 500 yd (TD) or 1000yd (TDX) track. ONE piece of food. And, they are working for that level of reinforcement often--at the very least, 70% of their tracks.

I insist I be honest to my dogs. And to take them from tracks with food, to a track without food...well, honestly, its lying to them. If you train them to always expect food on the track....and there's not, you just became an unreliable, untrustworthy, partner.

Now, let's talk about ways to augment a track without food...because that's a useful concept. Scuffing, or walking heel toe, or heavy walking, or whatever you want to call it--purposely altering your footfall so as to leave more scent--is augmenting your track. Use of extra articles is augmenting your track--but if you are preparing for a TD test, please realize going from 4 articles to just a start and end article at the test is lying to your dog just like suddenly eliminating food is. Why do I like scuff type augmentation? Because it happens at the test. The day before the test, at least 4, and often 5, people walked your track. If that's not 'scuffing' I don't know what is! Yes, its 24 hour old scent. And yes, it completely impacts the dog, almost always for the better.

So how do you wean food? Slowly and carefully, with eyes focused NOT on if your dog completed the track--that is NEVER the question to be assessed. Let's say you are going to go from S5 W3 food at 2....to S5 W5, food at 3. First--please recognize you just weaned food. Second, realize the single most important thing for you to assess, every step of the track is this: Is the dog's behavior IDENTICAL at W5 as it is at W3. There is no room for excuses here--your dog will have bad days where then behavior is worse...so just stay at that schedule until the behavior is the same. The behavior should be the same when adding age--your dog's behavior should be the same regardless of track age. Period. The only change you might see is a bit more speed if you step back to a young track (they almost act like they are enjoying the ease of it). A dog who is fluent at 24 hours should also be fluent at 5 minutes.

I digress. Back to weaning food. If you follow my whole scuff walk thing...you will keep adding distance to the walk, with food on one or two steps in the middle of the walk section. So, eventually, you will be at scuff 5, walk 125, with food at 61 & 62. Your test track will be 440-500 yards long (TD). 125 X 4=500. So now you are one quarter the way to being ready for a test! At this point, honestly, I stop counting. I decide I'm going to put one food drop on legs 2 &3, or 2 & 4, or 3&5....and rarely, 1 & something. And sometimes, there's only food on one leg.

The key concept though, is to watch behavior. If you allow behavior to deteriorate, and then go back and reintroduce food to get behavior back.....you are potentially reinforcing the weak behavior. So at each and every step of weaning....be brutally honest with yourself about the behavior you are seeing. There is not any room for 'excuses'--if its too hot, or too dry, or too wet, or too windy, or too many people walked their dogs over the track--none of that matters. The dog MUST meet criteria, preferably more than once, before you progress.

There is a feel element to this....at some point, if you are studying your dog's behavior, you will see that invisible quality we refer to as confidence. I can't describe it, but I sure know it when I see it. And when I see it, I get super careful--that's the point at which you might want to push the dog a bit harder...which you don't want to do, because you're putting that confidence at risk. Stay the course, and the confidence will grow stronger.

As an aside....you also can stay at the same scuff walk pattern for too long. We don't want our dogs to ever expect food to appear at a certain distance. They pattern train very quickly, and if there is always food between steps 20 & 30, and it's not there....totally reasonable for your dog to quit. You lied, and he's going to call you out on it.

A few other random things to do before being certified or entering a test....put a track in one day, leave flags, rewalk it the next day, and then run it (at whatever time you want). Even better, have someone else do one of those walks. I've only had one student who's dog objected to the test track, and once we trained for those conditions, she immediately passed (in 4 minutes). Practice facing the wrong direction at a turn...and wait until the dog takes you the right way. Practice being patient at the start flag, even to the point of being a bit of an anchor and asking the dog to insist you follow. Don't do any of these things all the time of course....just randomly (maybe once every 5-6 tracks) throw one of these in and let your dog figure it out.

Now, a brief word on the first leg. Once your dog is reliably putting his nose down and sniffing the start article, start moving the food away from the start. Move it 1 foot down the track....then maybe 3 feet (this isn't a recipe--you'll have to tease out the details for you and your dog). Here you can, planned, take a step back if you want, just to keep building the confidence. So, for example, yesterday Fletch's first treats were 3 steps out (track one), 7 steps out (track 2), 10 steps out (track 3) and 5 steps out (track 4). So I asked him to work longer, longer, longer, and shorter before he found reinforcement. You don't want your tracks to always be harder.... But I do want him to learn that if he continues forward, there will be reinforcement, and I don't want him to expect that on any given leg.

Now, back to the are you ready question....everything I have written so far is about the dog. What about you? Can you pick up the start article without breaking stride, and without correcting your dog ? Do you recognize loss of scent? When you see loss of scent, do you assess the terrain to determine if the scent may have rolled away, or towards you, or somewhere else? Do you recognize tracking behavior? Is your line handling smooth enough that your dog can search and find without you holding him back--are you working in partnership with him? Can you be calm and thoughtful while he searches? DO YOU TRUST HIM???

I have a friend who often comes down to our place to be certified. He is an amazing handler. He's calm, focused, relaxed, and smooth. His dogs are often young when they come down, and full of puppy craziness. And he knows their behavior well enough to smile while they zoom, wait patiently, and follow quietly when they return to work. He knows exactly what their tracking behavior looks like, and he's willing to wait for it. He has a LOT of tracking titles, and that's part of the reason why.

So there you have it! And, if you want to know when you're ready to enter a TDX test....briefly, dog is fluent at 6 hours and 3 hours (and everything in between). Dog and handler have successfully negotiated woods, roads, fences, creeks, crops, rough cover. Dog can track for 1100 yards. Dog can recover a track from a 10-20 yard error, and handler will believe it. Handler recognizes tracking behavior in all sorts of cover. Dog has the drive to keep searching if he looses the track (judges really, really, really want to see you pass....you'll have a lot of time to fix some pretty big errors). Dog has a reliable article indication. And yes, the dog has been introduced to the concept of intentionally laid cross tracks. I remain unconvinced that a dog can be trained to 'never' take a cross track. Well trained dogs take them, dogs who are never trained on XT don't take them. It's a crap shoot. And, the single biggest thing that tells me your dog is ready to enter a TDX test is a solid, confident, bossy, accurate start and first turn. Watch Samson for what that should look like. He may check to make sure he hasn't missed something...but holy cow, when that dog starts anyone would follow him. Ditto his turn--he might check, but when he goes, it's obvious that he KNOWS where he is going.

I'll speak for Michele as well as myself here. We are THRILLED when a dog passes. We are sad when a dog fails any test....but-- if it tracked well, if the handler handled well....we had fun watching, we admired you both (& we are even sadder). We are happy we were able to give you a chance, and we feel positive about your next attempt.