Tracking. It's one of my favorite things to do, although few know what it actually is. Tracking is an activity where you handle a dog on a leash called a line, and follow scent trails. There are three types of tracking you can do: TD, a simple trail in grass, VST, where you track on a hard surface, and TDX, where you track a dog through pretty much anything with a complex trail.Throughout the track, never on turns, aka "corners," there are things that the track layer, the person who walked the track, owns to help remind the dog what scent it's following. These are called articles. It can vary from a glove, to a shoe, to a lid they use in their kitchen. Different materials that the articles are made of holds the scent better than others. Cloth holds it the best.
There is little information on the science of scent, and what affects it, so my grandmother, who teaches me everything I know, found out all these things with trial and error. There are many things that can affect scent. In shaded areas, the foot path is wider and easier to follow than in sunlight. If there is fog outside, the footpath gets wider and draws the dog in. Water and snow also draw the dog in. Scent usually collects in valleys because of gravity. If there is a fence or building along the trail, then it gets pushed further out than where the person actually walked. On hard surface, the scent gets pushed up, causing the dog to have a high nose. If you walk under a power line, there's really no telling what the scent will do. It will just be all over the place! If a car travels over the trail, the dog may or may not get distracted based on whether its the track layer's scent or not. If it either way, it usually throws the scent off, while some dogs are unaffected. It really depends on how good the dog is. If a person or animal walks over the track, it usually distracts the dog momentarily. Sometimes, if its the track layer's car, then it will widen the scent path. Grass clear of trees in a sunlit area is what we consider the "norm." It's what we compare other weird tracks to. And these are just the basics!
1 Comment
Elizabeth
4/24/2017 08:57:39 am
Good job on your blog! You chose an interesting subject that isn't well known to other people. I love the way you tell/ explain the story.
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Jillian M.I am Jillian. I've been tracking since I was eight and I love what I do. Archives
May 2017
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