Sniffing Around Scent Work

I haven’t written about MT for a while. We are still out trailing many weekends, but we have gotten through that honeymoon period where I thought that Yeti could do no wrong. We have stumbled through a few disastrous episodes where Yeti started well, but lost the trail a little ways in, and it took me a long time to recognize it. One trail where he didn’t get a good scent article to start with, and felt pressured to follow a random track. And a few trails where he has chosen to follow an older trail laid by the target trail layer earlier (for another team) first, and then picked up the fresher track.

Some of these problems, admittedly, have been mine. I have failed to recognize the signals when Yeti has not been SURE about the trail, and I have unwittingly pressured him into following a “ghost trail” (act like he is following a trail, when he is not). But these problems have motivated me into a spate of information finding activities. I located a trainer in the UK who fortunately has a patreon account and is posting some webinars on great topics. I have been able to have some great problem-solving phone calls with a fellow scent work judge who has done a lot of mantrailing and also one very badly needed in person session.

The truth is out there, but you have to go looking for it. And you have to find reliable sources for it. I am a professional researcher, and my experience has stood me in good stead. I am used to  gathering a lot of information, comparing, contrasting, and digesting it, looking for the common threads that indicate truth, and comparing that to my gut feelings and observations.

And as a team, we have done some things right. We have worked a number of instances of split trails. (A split trail is where you have two people lay trails, at first side by side, but then they split and go different directions. The dog’s task is to follow only the trail that has the scent of the article that he has been given at the beginning of the trail.) Our first couple of tries at this were complete failures—Yeti picked the wrong trail to follow, and because I didn’t know what to do, I let him. But after some phone consultations, I got some suggestions to help him to choose the target trail, and he has been mostly consistent since then.

We have worked some moderately long trails, up to almost half a mile. I have learned that Yeti can and will air-scent directly to a person from quite a distance away, which means that he often doesn’t follow the track at all. I am happy to follow his lead, but it has led to some confusion on my part as to whether he is actually working the target scent or not. I am still learning to read him, and I have to get better at getting videos of us working.

We have worked in urban environments with some success. I have watched Yeti accurately track a trail layer across a huge parking lot in a deserted shopping center (admittedly, it was a fresh trail, but still, it was all asphalt). I had expected that urban areas would be difficult, but it turns out that most dogs can work them without any problem, if they are introduced early on in the learning process.

Yeti is generally a fairly focused worker, and I rarely see him get distracted, but on a couple of occasions he has gotten on the wrong trail or possibly caught in an older scent pool . Because I am working with a group of people, and we are often laying trails for more than one team, I have to keep track of where my trail layer has been before she starts off on a trail for Yeti. Yeti will pick up on any previous trail that the target person has put down,  not just the freshest one. And sometimes, when he is frustrated, he will wander off on a random trail. There is so much more to learn on this topic!

So I am still having fun, and parts of this journey are still illuminating my scent work journey. Stay tuned for more updates.