Backyard tracking

Coffee cans for tracking training 6-30-9

There were a couple of circumstances that led me to begin training the dogs in tracking, here in our back yard. Last Sunday, we took to dogs to the pond in order to let them play in the water and get Elvis a little more comfortable in it.

Being that it was a hot day, the place was inundated with teens, families and dogs all enjoying the water. Too many for us, so we came back home and let Sophie and Dakota play in the ditch as a consolation. Although Elvis wanted to get in the ditch, he doesn’t have the courage.

Water training was out and the dogs are still quarantined due to the neighbor’s dog having contracted Parvo, so I decided to work on teaching the dogs to track in the back yard. I got the idea of training the dogs in this manner from when I was a kid, and dad briefly worked with the police department to try and train Boots, my first dog, to find drugs. Dad didn’t have the patience to train Boots and soon gave up on the idea.

I took 3 coffee cans and placed them in the back yard, then dragged the Pheasant wing through the grass to one of the cans where I placed it under the can. Using a “Walkabout” extendable leash, I let Elvis out of the house, showed him where to start tracking, and then let him track the wing to the can it was hidden under.

Elvis tracks the wing to a can 6-30-9

After finding the wing, I took him back into the house and repeated the process with each can. The fourth time, I placed the cans in a triangular formation with each can 5-10 feet apart so that he would have to pass by the first 2 cans in order to track the wing to the 3rd can. He caught on rather quickly and did well for his first session.

I repeated the process with both Sophie and Dakota. Sophie, who will be 7 this year, didn’t catch on as quickly but she’s a fast learner. As for Dakota, I couldn’t tell if she was tracking or just being her wild self.

As a side note, we gave the dogs a dose of Revolution and Elvis suffered side effects from it for a couple of days. He had diarrhea on Monday and both him and his crate was a mess – he tried to keep his crate clean by pooping through the wire door. My wife had things cleaned up and Elvis bathed by the time I got home from work, and when he still had problems on Tuesday, she gave him a child’s dose of Pepto Bismo that seemed to take care of the problem – he munched down that cherry flavored pill and was back to normal by Wednesday.

Tags: bird dog training, training dog to track, wing on a string training