# Advice on his first real track/trail field work



## Pogaca (Dec 17, 2021)

Hello again,

We will be in the field this new year's eve and the new year's day doing some tracking and trailing exercises. I have a dog trainer friend who wants to work on hunting breeds with me to set up the scent trails. But unfortunately he has only trained labradors in a non hunting based setting and wants to gain more experience on the issue. To be honest, I have tried more proffesional options also, but they did not really seemed really enthusiastic about training my dog, and noone I contacted in my area trains hunting breeds in a proffesional manner. But nevertheless I trust my dog's ability to scent and I want to give him the opportunity. My goal is to get him to wait patiently when he finds the scented object, so I really do not like behaviors such as digging, putting it in his mouth etc, let alone eating it without supervision. yet I know I probably should allow him to do those in the start of his training. But the end goal is to have a dog that does not touch the object we were tracking. Obviously if he gets to point, all better but what he points or does not point at is a total mess. 

We will camp for two days and tried to DIY some capsules that we intend to place the "scented object" in. We thought about trying raw liver first since the blood must be a pungent enough smell to track. But apparently I do not want a red line over the snow .

I really want your advice on what scents to use, how to get him excited to do the job, how to conduct good behavior in field. I need every single experince you guys have.

Ps. My dog has a decent search command. I generally put a treat in my fist and put it in front of his nose, then command search and he will dig his nose on the ground, start sniffing frantically. But I must admit he gets distracted pretty easily.

Another note: my dog will go camping the first time, and if you have any advice on what to do and what not to do in a camp setting, please share those.


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