Blood Trailing - is the trail too old for a K9

When a hunter searches unseccessfully for a deer after the shot at what point in time do we expect a successfull search from a K9.

The one question I have been asked more than any other is how old a trail can a dog follow, the standard answer is: If there is scent, the dog will follow it. But that does not really answer the question, in my experience the window of opportunity diminishes greatly and becomes unrealiable at 72 hours. This is also the higest ageing of the trail standard a SAR K9 will be tested to, not including distractions.

Therefore, within our training regimen we must start aging the trails we set to run our dogs. The aging of a trail is done by going to a training location and laying a shorter than normal trail of deer blood droplets from the start to the finish with a reward article (food or toy) left at the end of the trail. The handler then goes back to the vehicle a different route, do not walk back to the car on the blood trail route you just set otherwise you run the risk of training your dog to back trail. After waiting an appropraite length of time to allow the trail to age the handler enters the trail from the back and places the dogs reward as an indicator to the dog the trail has finshed. If your dog is a food reward dog place a small amount food under an article such as a glove, and carry the remainder with you. This prevents animals from stealing your dogs food reward. It is now time to return to the start point with your dog and run the dog on the blood trail, again, do not walk backwards on your blood trail. Aging can be done in 12 hr increments, do not increase the time until your dog has acheived some consistent successful finds.

Keep the aged trails short and fun for the dog, the difficulty is in learning to follow increasingly older trails, not in the length or distractions (bunny tracks etc) of the trail.

Pro Tip: run your trails in a semi cricle starting close to your vehicle and ending close to your vehicle, this increases the amount of actual trailing time with the dog as you do not have to walk all the way back from an end point further away.

Interesting stuff. I've seen a beagle follow a 2 day old track under two inches of snow. I guess the biggest problem with trying to follow an older track is the confusion caused by a hotter track crossing it.

Its natural for a dog to follow the hottest trail, and is probably the single most reason for search failure. This is trained for in 'distraction' training which I will discuss later in another post.