| Look at this .................. one smart little Tenterfield Terrier "TRACKING" |
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| 'TAS' is now known as: T Ch Kanecutter Tasmin ADM JDM ADO JDO SD ET |
| Hello Members and Friends, Michelle Varcoe from Mackay Queensland would like to share with us her latest exciting news about her amazing little Tenterfield 'Tas'. She has now managed to get her final qualifier for Jumpers Dog Open. September 23, 2006. Titles for this year: Tracking Dog Excellent (TDX) Tracking Champion (TCh) Agility Dog Master (ADM) Agility Dog Open (ADO) Jumping Dog Open (JDO) Snooker Dog (SD) As ADO, JDO, and SD titles were only introduced on 1st July 2006, she has done a great job. Michelle is hoping Tas will get her Snooker Dog Excellent title sometime in the near future. Please let us know if you do, as we would all love to hear about it. Thanks for the great photos and keep up the excellent work. Kind regards, Mary |
| The following article was kindly sent in by Michelle, for all of us who are not familiar with Tracking and are interested in becoming involved. If you are interested you can make further enquiries with your local Kennel Club or contact the CCC(Q). |
| T R A C K I N G Tracking is about the handler and dog working as a team with the handler having to trust the dog to lead the way. ALL dogs can track but they need the drive and motivation to want to track. There are many different ways of training your dog to track (as in all codes of dog sports) and it is up to each handler to decide which one is best for them and their dog. Competition tracking simulates a real life situation, a person has become lost and the dog must find that person by tracking the scent left behind. A couple of the main differences with competition tracking is that articles (usually socks or scraps of material) are left by the bait (the tracklayer) and the dogs MUST indicate these articles. Indication is done in many ways, lying, sitting or standing on the article, even by the dog picking up the article and shaking it. Another difference is that the handler MUST NOT guide the dog in anyway, the dog must lead the way. The Tracking Tests start from a TQT (Preliminary Test) and go up to a Test 6 with the tracks getting more complex at each level. The dog must wear a tracking harness with a 10m lead attached. It is preferred that the dog works at the full 10ms but sometimes terrain prevents this. The tracks are marked out using flags and mapped the day before, usually by the bait, steward and judge. The next day the bait drops an article at the start flag and follows the map removing the flags as they go along. The bait also drops articles along the track as indicated by the map, usually 3 to 4 articles are required. At the end of the track the bait must lie down and be as inconspicuous as possible. Most baits either have a sleep or take a good book along! After the required time has elapsed the dog and handler are taken to the start by the judge and steward and told they can start to track when ready. Hopefully the dog will take a good sniff at the start article and head off, nose to the ground, tail up, only stopping along the way to indicate articles and at the end of the track when they have found the bait. However ............. it's not always that easy!! Our tracking up here in North Queensland, is done on cattle properties and there are all sorts of doggy distractions to contend with, like horses, cattle, fresh cow pats (either to roll in or eat), kangaroos and quails just to name a few. Then there are the distactions the handler has to contend with like gullies, ant hills and lantana, all not so good if you have a dog that tracks at a run! The judge and the steward (with a map of the track) follow the dog and the handler, with the judge assessing the tracking team as they go along. Sometimes a dog may miss a corner, follow a cross track, ignore articles or just decide to track something a bit more interesting (like a kangaroo) and in any of those cases the judge marks the track as a fail as the required task has not been completed successfully. If all has gone well, the dog tracked, indicated articles and found the bait the judge will mark the track as either a pass, good, very good or excellent and the dog and handler are able to go on to the next test. Of course there is more involved in tracking but I am hoping that this basic introduction will make people think ......... maybe I'll give it a go. Tracking is challenging for both handler and dog but most importantly of all, it's FUN! Michelle Varcoe 19th November 2006 |
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