HI there: Does anyone here compete in both field/bird work AND tracking? I did a lot of tracking with my GSP when he was young. Once I started field work with NAVHDA, he started searching while tracking. I want to start him again with the hopes of getting a TD next year. Any ideas/experiences? Thanks. Jen

I started tracking him at 4mons. He did incredibly well from a young age. As I introduced bird work, he started searching/quartering. I stopped tracking as my obedience and NAVHDA obligations were growing. I would however, like to start tracking again.

He has a wonderful nose. Received perfect scores in his NA test in Use of Nose as well as the pheaant track. He can do this without a doubt. I just have to get past the hunting instinct!

I don't believe the nose needs to be down as I have a friend whose Terv and Malinois track with their heads up.

My obedience club may be having a tracking seminar in the Spring and so that may help with some of my issues. I will start tracking again now that NAVHDA is over for the year and see how he does.

PM David Nauer. He is a member of this forum and does AKC tracking with his GSPs and his dachsunds. He has put numerous tracking titles on his dogs. His dachsund got the highest tracking title this year at the GSP Nationals (we had all breed tracking). He should be able to answer any questions you have about AKC tracking. He is also a super nice person. Another option is to join the Performance GSP Yahoo Group (Dave is one of the moderators) and post all your tracking questions. That group is for all GSP owners that do performance events with their dogs excluding Conformation and Hunting activies. They are also a super bunch of folks.

Here is the link to the Performance GSP Yahoo Group:

pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/PerformanceGSPs/

Thanks everyone for the help!

PS- Does anyone do competitive obedience in this group? I have my eye on an OTCH down the road!

Yep, both my girls have a CD.  Halo was the HIT shorthair at this years Nationals and we are getting ready to get back into the Obedience ring of the CDX. If all works out, I am planning on going after that OTCH with Halo.  Ringo is in training with obedience, but has a ways to go.

I also do agility, flyball, hunt tests, my oldest is a therapy dog. 

There are quite a few others on here that do obedience as well.  And at least one that has an OTCH on her shorthair.

Again, I would refer you to the Performance Yahoo Group.  You will find allot of folks on that list thay do obedience.

Hi all -- I was in Jacksonville for the past 4 days judging agility -- much nicer weather there than the -7 degree wind chill and 14" of snow at the house when I left on Thursday -- Barely got out of Colorado -- the flights before and after mine were cancelled.  But I did get back late last night.

Karen is the tracker in the house, but I do a lot of tracklaying for the "hard core" trainers.  The cool news from the weekend is one of the ladies Karen trains with already had the first ever AKC Champion Tracker (CT) Dalmation -- she just finished her second CT this weekend on that Dalmation's son, becoming the first Mother/Son team to ever both earn AKC CT titles of ANY breed --

The Dals track quite differently than the GSPs (or the Dachshund), and AKC is designed to be for all breeds -- you'll see quite a few sporting dogs out there -- we are a hot bed in Colorado for Clumber Spaniels doing traking (for example).

AKC is foot tracking (e.g. someone walks in a field to lay a track, dropping an article or two) with varying layers of difficulty.  The rules require the dog to track -- it doesn't require a dog to exclusively have nose to the ground -- although a dog that strictly air scents probably isn't going to pass.  However, there is lattitude for judges (as in any judged event) to decide whether a dog is indeed tracking or not -- some judges do not understand the general sporting dog mix of ground and air scenting and sometimes you'll get whistled off a track due to that.  But it is like any other event -- you'll see variances in rules interpretation (and enforcement).

We do hunt test our GSPs, but not to advanced levels.  So I do not think we are qualified to comment on mixing a Field Trialing and AKC Tracking -- however, in my opinion, GSPs are very smart and do differentiate on what they are doing and learn how to react differently.

Sure -- you need the core instinct, but if your GSP is tracking and insists on checking out "obstacles" off track along the way, that would be a problem -- from what I can see (and this is a generalization for all sporting dogs) the dogs that have the instinct to track and have been trained to recognize that the "job today" is to track that persons scent that was on the scarf will do fine. 

We have run into a few of ours that do have difficulty remembering they are tracking and not hunting when the harness and 40' line is on -- four of the six dogs in the house have tracking titles at some leve -- a great example was the 2008 NSS Tracking Test in WI -- our sport hunter (all our friends ask whether they can go hunt with us because of him) was faced with a track that was a killer -- his first leg was about a 130 yard straight track.  Half way through he went on point -- at first we thought he was pointing a tweetie, but realized that the track went straight towards a corn field and he was picking up scent all the way from the field.  About 15 yards short of the field the track turned to the left.  Luke didn't turn, went into the field, and started hunting to the tune of the judge's whistle ending his performance that day.  Disappointing at some level, but it is perhaps asking too much to have a driven sporting dog march towards a corn field likely populated with game birds any more than it would be fair to have a Border Collie tracking straight towards a field with sheep or a terrier with a rats nest sitting 20 yards past the turn.

If you can accept occassional happenings like this you will do fine with tracking.  I can't see how tracking training would affect field performance -- we see no indication that the reverse (tracking habits moving into the field) occur -- the instinct is just too strong to hunt.  The reverse is usually what we witness.

Tracking is time consuming to train (Karen is out at least once a week and a session will be 5-7 hours long depending on the number of dogs being trained).  Remember that tracks at the advanced levels are aged at least 3 hours -- if you train with a group of 5 dogs (for example) and you space the training tracks out every 1/2 hour (e.g. lay each track 1/2 hour apart -- heck it takes 15-20 minutes to lay a full TDX track anyway!) you are at 5 1/2 hours from first track to final dog completing it's track -- and add travel to and from the site to that and you may have spent 7 hours training.

Dave