Something to think about...

It is SUPER important that the reinforcement comes from the track, and not from you, as much as possible (when training articles, that's hard). Especially think about this at the start article: if every time your dog comes to a start article he receives food from you, you are training in a contingency that we have to get rid of. And Alf has made it very clear, that contingency is his cue to track. It is MUCH easier to train article if you have a reliable down or retrieve on your dog (reliable=one quiet verbal cue with 100% response rate). If you have the down or retrieve, you can cue it, and send the dog onto the track, where upon the track rewards him for starting. Donna Thompson used to tell me, "follow like a cat behind your dog." You should be that invisible.

One of the hardest things about training our dogs to track is that WE aren't training them...the track is. Spend some time thinking about that, it is a critical concept. We carefully and thoughtfully set the track up so that it teaches the dog what to do. Jennifer's Rebel has to learn to use his nose to find hotdogs in the grass. We set that up by walking heel toe and putting a hotdog in every foot step. Today, the grass taught him it was valuable and he should spend more time looking in it. The TRACK taught him this, we did not.

So remember, your job is to carefully watch your dog and see what part of the track made him better, and what parts made him struggle. Then, develop a strategy to let the track teach him how to succeed at the challenges. What does struggling look like? Sniffing the air, eating grass, laying down, barking, going off track and sniffing other stuff. If, for example, you put a 100 yd straight track in for your dog, and half way down he gets distracted, and has a hard time getting back to work....your track was too long. Next track, go 40 yards, then do a 60. Scuff from 40 to 60 (on the 60 yd track), and super stuff the article at the end. Success? Great. Quit. No better? Still quit, and think about how to lay them tomorrow. Hint: I'd be more likely to do 10 yards with the same food pattern than to increase the food. Always think about what precisely you are training....that is far more important than leaving 200 hotdogs to get down your 100 yard track.