Puppy imprinting
The past few days have been full of learning experiences for Boone. When he arrived in Missouri earlier this week, he had never been exposed to a scent line of any type. He had been tested using a small piece of liver on a rope, but had never followed an actual scent line of any distance. Since arriving, he has run 10 tracks, and shown dramatic improvement with each line. All this while acclimating to the rules of the house, and becoming established with the rest of the pack.
When training a scent tracking dog, the importance of imprinting cannot be overstated. Whether the dog will be used for man tracking, big game hunting, or blood tracking, making a connection between the dog's brain and its nose is essential. With blood tracking dogs, I like to make a progression from liver, to blood, and then onto deer body scent (typically hoof scent).
Liver is typically used in the beginning because it has a strong blood scent that really stimulates a dog. This is important because most pups won't naturally follow a faint scent line very well. Some dogs need several weeks of liver drags before they are ready to progress, others a much shorter period of time. It is important for the handler to be able to read the dog in order to determine when the time is right to make the change. Also, the handler should keep in mind, that an important part of early training is to teach the dog good "line sense." In essence, this is how the dog learns to progress from point A to point B to point C, and so on. If a young dog is forced to search too much for the scent line early in their development, they will often develop a wide sweeping search pattern rather than a focused pattern of moving consistently down the line. Subsequently, progressing to inconsistent, "broken" scent lines too early can lead to less than ideal results, in my experience. This is why drags work so well in early training and imprinting.
Boone's first 8 tracks were all done with liver drags. The first 2 lines were lack luster, but we worked through the short tracks, so that he could get to the reward at the end. By the fourth track, he became frantic in his search to reach the reward. The few tracks that followed were very productive, and Boone definitely remembered the lessons from the previous days. It was obvious that he was learning exactly what the idea of the "game" was. Lines were increasingly aged from 0 to 45 minutes without any perceivable increased difficulty for Boone.
Today, I decided to try a progression of scents to see how Boone reacted. I traded the typical liver drag for a small, 4"X4" piece of deer hide with blood soaked into the fur. I am not a fan of hide drags for developed dogs due to the large amount of scent they leave. However, a small piece of hide or deer hoof laced with deer blood makes a nice puppy drag without leaving a big "cloud" of hide scent. Also, this allows the dog to start imprinting on both blood and deer odor.
Watching Boone's response to the first hide/blood drag was interesting and expected. The pup, who was excitedly running down liver drags the day before acted a little confused as to what was expected. He required some encouragement to get started, but progressed quickly down the track once he figured out what was going on. Here is the first drag of the day.
We ended the track with a food reward, and some tug of war with the small piece of hide. It is awesome to see the prey drive and tug drive in this little guy. He was determined in his effort to tear this piece of hide down from the branch. I cannot say enough about how helpful it is in the motivation of a tracking dog when they exhibit this kind of drive. Check it out!
The next track shows how well the imprinting from the first track went. The second drag was run several hours after the first. The line was laid with the same small piece of hide and about half as much blood dripped onto the hide as the first. In the video, I mention that the line is about 200 feet long, but after the track was completed I measured it at close to 300 feet (or 100 yards) with two 90 degree turns. This is about as long as I like for a pup of this age because of their short attention spans. This line was aged 45 minutes. As you will see, he runs the line quite well, and without the hesitation he had on the first line. This is all because the scent was imprinted in his brain, and he knew exactly what to do when he experienced the same scent again.
Over the next week or two, we will continue with blood, blood/hoof, or blood/hide drags. Lines will not be increased in length, but will be aged for greater periods of time as Boone gains experience. Keep following!
Good hunting, Brady