Does anyone do this with their GSP? I've tried tracking with Leena. I was driving to work today and the truck in front of me had a sign for a local SAR club.  I called and the trainer is supposed to be calling me back tonight to set something up.  Before I wasted time/money, I wanted to just get a general idea if a GSP would be any good at this?

Thanks

We haven't actually tried tracking, but the training facility that we go to offers it. They advertise the activity as one that ANY dog can enjoy. I would imagine that with the GSP's natural hunting ability, that they would especially enjoy the opportunity to use "what your mama gave ya!" We plan to give it a try after a stint in agility   I would imagine that if Leena enjoyed and was talented in tracking, that she would excel at SAR. From what I understand, GSPs can be very successful at it.

Side story: my school brings in drug sniffing dogs to check all the students' backpacks and I daydream about being able to save them tons of money by teaching Penny to be a drug dog

Laura

I don't know anyone that uses GSP's although I know a gal that uses Vizslas.  Her prevous dog did live searches, her current dog is a cadaver dog.  

I read an article a while ago, I can't remember where, about a GSP that was trained for drug searches or some kind of seach.  Normally the dogs sit when they find something but the GSP's wanted to point rather than sit so they adjusted their training.

We do quite a bit of AKC Tracking work, but that is quite different from pure SAR work (although obviously they do have related skills).  AKC tracking has a defined set of skills you train towards for tracking the trail left by an individual in a field or urban environment, including finding "dropped" articles, with specific limits on turns, age of track, articles, etc --

SAR has a set of skills and objectives that are geared to real world challenges for specific tasks (finding people (air scent), finding dead people (HRD detection), following a track (trailing)).  AKC's TDX and VST can be likened to the Type II trailing -- Type I trailing is aged much longer (12+ hours) and is longer (> 1 mile), but AKC's tests do not match the SAR Air Scenting or Human Remains Detection testing per se (I'm basing this on SARDUS' web site -- NOTE:  I've never been to one of their activities, so this is totally derived from their test descriptions).

The Air Force Academy Security Police did have a drug detection GSP for quite a few years -- I used to see that team at AFA Football games -- and I got to see a demonstration of that GSP in action.  Quite exciting.

AKC tracking is very demanding on training time -- if you can't find a weekly 4-5 hour block of time to train with friends (at some point you'll have dogs needing tracks aged for 3-5 hours), sometimes more than once a week, plus mini-training sessions several times a week, you may not have time for AKC tracking if your goals are to go all of the way.  Of course, in history, only one GSP has ever achieved AKC's "holy grail" of a CT (Champion Tracker).  I just did a quick look at GSP AKC tracking success last week -- over the past 7 years there have been only 11 GSP Tracking Dog (TD) titles, 2 GSP Tracking Dog Excellent (TDX) titles, and zero GSP Variable Surface Tracking (VST) titles (the sole VST and CT title were earned in 2001). That is over a 7 year period -- so you can see it is an Accomplishment to get even a TD title with your GSP and going further is a great achievement.

I believe SAR training is even more intense and time consuming.  I remember a local breeder here in Colorado Springs that had a GSP from one of their litters trained as a SAR dog -- if I get some time I'll have to see if I can find his web site and post it.

I'd love to hear how this turns out and what you end up deciding to try -- can you let us know what you've done?

For the record my wife Karen has put TD titles on three GSPs and put a CT (meaning TD, TDX, and VST) on our Dachshund -- in fact, she did that at the 2009 GSPCA NSS Tracking Test -- no GSPs entered the VST test and Zin the Dachshund got in and passed, becoming the 190th dog of any breed to ever pass a VST test.  She is presently working two of those GSPs with TD titles on advanced tracking skills.

Dave