Is it Trailing, Mantrailing Tracking/Trailing or Tracking?

You might have seen these sports names above and unsure what exactly is the difference between them? Or even wondered what one would be best for you and your dog?

Well, I am hope to answer these questions below…

Firstly, let's address what is the same with all these sports.

They are all ways of teaching a dog to follow Human scent. It is just how they do that differs between the sports…

Tracking - Most people when they think about Tracking it is what we call footstep tracking, this is normally involved in sports such as IGP or obedience where the aim is to be as accurate as possible, to the ground disturbance and human scent left behind when the track is laid. This is usually only done on grass, woodlands or anywhere where there will be ground disturbance.

There is a number of different organisations that offer tracking and they each have their own take on it.

I would like to add that hard surface tracking is completely possible, but that is for another blog!

Raven hard surface tracking

Mantrailing - By now most people will have at least heard of this sport, this is when we teach dogs to follow a specific persons scent over any terrain, dogs will use a combination of ground and air scent for this, depending on what they find easier or more useful at that given time.

In general there is always a human at the end of a Mantrail…

Margo finding her person

Trailing - While similar to Mantrailing above, in the aspect we are asking the dogs to follow a specific human scent, it is the end that is the difference here. In Trailing the end doesn’t always have to have a human there, it could be an small scented article, large scented article, transfer scent (the human sat on a seat for example), nothing or a human just like in Mantrailing.

Using Trailing rather than Mantrailing you are able to practice at home and create an unpredictable end for the dog…

Flora working

Tracking/Trailing - Having a combination of accuracy of Tracking while allowing the dog to use all its natural abilities such as switching from ground to air scenting. Using scented articles along the way allows the dogs to assist the dog in their Track/Trail (please note that some times there is only a start and end article).

This method has become very popular in the last few years and with the ability to practice  at home is just another reason for this.

Indie Tracking/Trailing

So, what one do you choose?

If you asked me it will always be Trailing or Tracking/Trailing, they both allow the dogs to learn to follow human scent, using smarter ways to teach dogs without them having to work in a higher state of arousal (intensity), they are actually thinking (it is important to be able to work your dog in arousal but for these sports I find less is better).

Rather than being pulled around just hanging on, actually work as a team.

The added bonus of being able to go away and practice at home means each session you attend is worth it that little bit more…

These are just my thoughts from my over a decade of working with my own dogs and teaching thousands of clients dog.

I am by no way am I saying you shouldn’t go out there and do any of them, I would always say you are better to be doing something rather than nothing with your dog!

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