# Off Leash Trailing



## Amy Hisaoka (May 3, 2012)

Anyone do off leash trailing with their dog? I heard of some people who do it regularly,and tried it once with my dog, (well actually twice, because I dropped the line once) but it's harder to watch your dog's cues becasue they are off in a flash. A good re-find is important here... But she did fairly well with it and had more room to work out the problem areas.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Our team used this approach for awhile but went back to working the trailing dogs on lead and the air scent dogs off lead (for the most part) and they are pretty much maintained in on or the other discipline, not both.

The trailing dogs will air scent to victim if crosswind carries over scent and the air scent dogs will often pick up a fresh trail in the search area and that is allowed. 

I think the offlead thing can work ok in a fairly uncontaminated wilderness area but being able to read those little subtleties like a short head pop, loosing the trail etc can get lost offlead..especially if you are not right on top of the dog. 

But I have not worked a live find dog for some years now, only cadaver so....that is a pretty cheap two cents on my part.


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## Amy Hisaoka (May 3, 2012)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> Our team used this approach for awhile but went back to working the trailing dogs on lead and the air scent dogs off lead (for the most part) and they are pretty much maintained in on or the other discipline, not both.
> 
> The trailing dogs will air scent to victim if crosswind carries over scent and the air scent dogs will often pick up a fresh trail in the search area and that is allowed.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the reply Nancy! That does make a lot of sense.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

The team I worked with did all off lead work. Each team consisted of handler, dog and two flankers. 
Once each team had their section of the search grid the flankers worked the outside edge of the grid. The dog learned to quarter between these flankers. It could be a real pia down in the Ozarks. Flat ground, excellent.


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## Phil Dodson (Apr 4, 2006)

I trail my PSD exclusively off the lead and train all my handlers to do the same. Most of our tracks are short compared to what SAR folks do however. I see no difference in spotting any changes in the dogs behavior trailing on or off lead.


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## Craig Snyder (May 7, 2012)

I think a lot of it depends on the handler and the dog. If you can't keep pace with your dog I think it's difficult to do for reasons already mentioned above by Nancy. Our team pretty much does air scent off leash and our trackers on leash. Our teams trackers are true hound dogs, (plotz and beagle) and both would probably be off in the next county given half a chance! No way would you keep up.

I hope to start working on doing some scent specific air scenting soon. But my dog isn't that far ranging of a dog and is usually pretty close to me (50-75 yds) and she is a refind so I don't worry about her going to far away on me anyway. I did scent her off a friends car once for fun and she picked up her trail quickly and was gone. But as I said it was a friend and she knew who she was looking for right away. So it wasn't really fair or a good evaluation.

An air scent dog will track if the opportunity presents itself and a tracking dog will air scent if the opportunity presents itself. At least from the dogs I have had a chance to see work.

I just think it would be hard to keep pace and really be able to watch a tracking dog if they are off leash. Which I think you need to do for tracking. 

Craig


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## Peter Cavallaro (Dec 1, 2010)

Amy Hisaoka said:


> Anyone do off leash trailing with their dog? I heard of some people who do it regularly,and tried it once with my dog, (well actually twice, because I dropped the line once) but it's harder to watch your dog's cues becasue they are off in a flash. A good re-find is important here... But she did fairly well with it and had more room to work out the problem areas.


 

here is a re-post of a vid link, curr V GSD thread, never thought to put a leash on a dog for tracking, makes sense where yr dog might cross a busy road??

http://youtu.be/RvBRqiW4UR0


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

We do train our air scent dogs to be able to work scent specific.


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## Nicole Stark (Jul 22, 2009)

Phil Dodson said:


> I trail my PSD exclusively off the lead and train all my handlers to do the same. Most of our tracks are short compared to what SAR folks do however. I see no difference in spotting any changes in the dogs behavior trailing on or off lead.


Indeed, what you said. 'Cept the dog I follow isn't usually trailing a man but some other four legged creature. Frankly, I like the distance of off lead trailing as I am not looking for relatively arbitrary things like line tension but instead I am invited to study the dogs rhythmic movements. There is a pace/cadence you become distinctly accustomed to and the COB is highly evident when it occurs. The draw back, once the dog gets moving is that she dog travels at a considerably faster than I can travel cross country on an ATV.

Not quite the same I understand, but it's really the behavior I am commenting on. The snipe, she's worked off lead for this purpose almost always unless I have her doing work along a roadside.


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## Kat Hunsecker (Oct 23, 2009)

Hello,

We do have both in our group. 
Some on leash some off, the ones on leash are the bloodhounds... no way they are going to wait for you to keep up.
The other ones work off leash, they move faster ,too. But they do "wait" for the handler. 
The crittering can always be an issue, doesn't matter if they are on a leash or off a leash.
The reason why we try to go off leash is, because we are lazy...LOL Going through the same terrain than the dog does can make it very tough on the handler. also if the terrain is difficult, and the handler cannot move like the dog , he is holding on to the line, hindering the dog and can give unwanted "corrections". But this is soemthing that can be avoided. 
We just found it easier, of course it depends on the dog , and it has to have a strong alert behavior, like the airscent ones.
On line or off line you have to be able to read your dog. I would say it is up to the preference of the handler and then of course on the dog- wouldn't let any of our bloodhounds of leash...LOL the flankers allready have a hard time keeping up with them...


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## Phil Dodson (Apr 4, 2006)

Just curious, what is the average length and time you guys train for if working off lead (SAR). I on occasion let my trails set 1/2 hour and up to 1 mile. but the majority are 10 minutes old and 3 to 4 blocks in length. My chances of sucess are not that great if much longer so that is mostly what we train for.


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## Kat Hunsecker (Oct 23, 2009)

Most of us do wilderness, but we also train in urban settings.
In general, we atleast let them age 20 minutes. We up the time and length the more experienced a dog is. In training we try to have them age quite a bit, we have everything in there from 20 to 3h, depending on the training level of the dog. We do set up,too way older ones. The dogs seem to be doing well. The trailers do better though if they have a scent article if the area is highly contaminated.(eventhough we have a PLS) . Distance vary,too. sometimes they get short ones a few hundred yards or up to a mile.
Avarage I would say is half a mile, and 1h aged.


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## Craig Snyder (May 7, 2012)

Phil Dodson said:


> Just curious, what is the average length and time you guys train for if working off lead (SAR). I on occasion let my trails set 1/2 hour and up to 1 mile. but the majority are 10 minutes old and 3 to 4 blocks in length. My chances of sucess are not that great if much longer so that is mostly what we train for.


Our trackers are all on leash on the team. With the team it's twice a week training usually in a mixed urban setting. We try to age at least an hr for these, about one mile. A mix of grass, sidewalk and asphalt usually. 3-6 turns. We sometimes work them in woods, meadow or farms as well. I know our two teams also train on 24hr+ tracks outside of team training.

In most of our suburban settings outside of Philly you can't run them off leash anyway. Way to many roads.

Craig


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## Phil Dodson (Apr 4, 2006)

That is always a concern when trailing off lead. My teams are all trained on a "Wait" command if they get a little bit too far ahead or approaching too much traffic. 
I prefer off lead as I am able to get to the perp a lot quicker than on a line.


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## mel boschwitz (Apr 23, 2010)

It would seem that either on or off lead, any trail for a criminal has a much more limited success as it ages. Either the bad guy is just soooo far ahead that even off lead the dog cant catch up, or the bad guy can get into a car.

In SAR thats usually not the case, so having dogs capable of working a much older trail is imperative. Sometimes the dogs arent even called until a significant length of time has passed.

In my department we are also starting to push having a dog run the trail of a not in progress crime (burglary, criminal mischief, etc). A lot of time the bad guy goes home after a crime. No reason a dog cant attempt that trail. There may be some evidence found along the way to indicate who was involved, even if the dog cant work the trail all the way, for whatever the reason. 

My dogs routinely run 24hr+ trails in all environments.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

The most common trail for us is..someone goes missing during the day, family and neighbors tromps all over the last known point looking for them then calls the police, with a time lag that can be a few minutes or a day or more. 

The police do a cursory search with their own dogs and call us if fast resolution is not obtained. We get put on standby when they get the call, but they find most of them quickly and without us

So by now the trail is probably 7, 8 or so hours old or more, it is night, and the intent is to establish a direction to push air scent dogs ahead and to keep trying to follow the trail.

Most typical call is rural, next is urban, last is true wilderness.

------------

Obviously there are other situations but this seems to be how most of them play out. People call quickly on kids, less quickly on old folks or folks with dementia. Not so many lost hikers/hunters with cell phones, even though we have some iffy service areas, most can get a text through.


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## Craig Snyder (May 7, 2012)

Nancy, 

Very similar experience here. We rarely get called in until at least 18-24 hrs after the person is missing and well after the police get their K9's in there and sometimes their bloodhounds. Unfortunately I haven't seen much sucess with the bloodhounds locally. We've had two searches this past year where they indicated in a totally opposite direction. In one case the person had drowned a few hundred feet from the PLS but the local LE pretty much discounted that theory because of the bloodhounds and other factors. 

While we will try, using the tracking dogs after 24 hrs and with all the containmnation, there is a very low probabilty of success due to all the reasons you mentioned. 

Phil, I can see where off lead trailing is very benefical when going for suspects. Usually your tracks are way fresher than what we get in SAR. I probably wouldn't train much on tracks over 1-3 hrs tops. But I think I would work on extending them. Also, have you ever trained your patrol dog while off-leash tracking with a negative decoy? I.e. two suited up decoys (for safety), but you're tracking only one of them? I'm thinking of say a suspect that runs into a suburban wooded area frequented by the local teenagers. (Very common here!). 

Out of curiosity Phil, would you off leash track for a missing child or elderly peson if you were first on scene? I would think your patrol dog would be in an apprehend mode when tracking most of the time which wouldn't be good for a child or mentally deficent person. So unless you split your training between on and off leash tracking I would think the onleash tracking could be compromised. (no offense but the compromising in that case is usually a handler issue from not enough reps with a long lead!)

We get frustrated when local LE tell us they already searched an area and they are tasking us to another area. Only to find out later it was all done on leash by a patrol dog. Over the years this has resulted in several people not being found right away. We eventually usually get the chance to redo these higher probability areas.

Craig


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## Craig Snyder (May 7, 2012)

mel boschwitz said:


> In my department we are also starting to push having a dog run the trail of a not in progress crime (burglary, criminal mischief, etc). A lot of time the bad guy goes home after a crime. No reason a dog cant attempt that trail. There may be some evidence found along the way to indicate who was involved, even if the dog cant work the trail all the way, for whatever the reason.
> 
> My dogs routinely run 24hr+ trails in all environments.


Mel, Great point about working a patrol dog on older tracks! 

Phil.. I take back what I said! Work them old tracks too!!! 

Mel & Phil - Any thoughts on maybe trying out a SAR trained tracking dog on some of these older tracks when you believe the suspect is long gone? Most SAR teams won't do criiminal searches for suspects due to the danger, but the kind of trail you describe Mel, kind of falls into a gray area I think. I think our trackers would be interested in that type of work. And without family members out searching and trampling the hell out of an area, they might have much better success. We'd have to work them a bit on how to pick up a track with no scent article however which could be difficult for them at first. Might have to work up a different command for that type of tracking. But we have worked them on tracking using a car to scent from so working from a burglary scene might not be a stretch. I think most SAR trackers will have (or should have), all the paperwork and training records needed to allow any found evidence to be admissible in court.

Craig


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Craig Snyder said:


> We get frustrated when local LE tell us they already searched an area and they are tasking us to another area. Only to find out later it was all done on leash by a patrol dog. Over the years this has resulted in several people not being found right away. We eventually usually get the chance to redo these higher probability areas.
> 
> Craig


Craig, we have become much more "pushy" about re-searching areas near the house. Even if the initial search was efficient, dementia patients are often elusive and on the move hiding from the searchers and not responding. Particulary when it is someone who regularly goes out and about in the area near the house. There is a huge amount of scent of varying ages and it gets very complex and tough for the dogs if they are not trained under those circumstances. Too many searches where the victim is very close to their home in the most unusual and illogical of places.

That is also a training scenario we try to set up around peoples' homes because we know their scent is already everywhere.


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## Phil Dodson (Apr 4, 2006)

I do not track lost persons. My partner is find and bite thus we only track severe misdemeanors and felony suspects. We have an awesome neighboring sheriffs Office who eagerly come out with their hounds and trail for us when the situation dictates their use. Our DOC eagerly accepts the call outs as well.Both have had good success.
Agree on the screw up by LE personnel! Just this past Sunday my newest team, had a felony track. K-9 Kidd had already located an article of clothing and the stolen items when our local deputies upon arrival broke the perimiter and began walking around with flashlights. Kidds handler had to cease the track as there were so many deputies in the area it became almost impossible to stay on the right trail.
We do train with lots of distractions to include placing bite equipment out along the track as well.


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## Craig Snyder (May 7, 2012)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> Craig, we have become much more "pushy" about re-searching areas near the house. Even if the initial search was efficient, dementia patients are often elusive and on the move hiding from the searchers and not responding. Particulary when it is someone who regularly goes out and about in the area near the house. There is a huge amount of scent of varying ages and it gets very complex and tough for the dogs if they are not trained under those circumstances. Too many searches where the victim is very close to their home in the most unusual and illogical of places.
> 
> That is also a training scenario we try to set up around peoples' homes because we know their scent is already everywhere.


We try to be pushy too. But in PA there are like some +1000 different local police departments and +2000 fire departments, (mostly volunteer). Every township, borough, town, city have their own departments, some with only a half-dozen LE officers or less. No county level LE and the State Police rarely get involved. Most of them have never actually led a search yet think it's something easy to do and just flood the area with fire fighters and police. Educating them is a constant chore as turn over in FD's chief officers can be high as well as a fair amount of turnover in local LE as well. Most, have no idea that dogs are trained for different uses or how best to use them yet are often hesitant to take the advice of volunteer SAR teams with whom they might not know the personnel and have never worked with. 

While some areas we get repeat business and relations are good, (mostly DCNR areas), it can often be decades between searches in some locals. Constant education and bridge building!

Craig


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## mel boschwitz (Apr 23, 2010)

Phil- I routinely work my dog in busy parks to get her past the people distraction. But at night when you add in the flashlights the visual distraction takes on a whole new level. But, my dog is scent specific, and that may make it easier as far as the human distraction..? I dont know, never worked a hot scent dog.

Craig, my dog (bloodhound btw), is SAR first, patrol second. No bite, but she will gladly tackle someone who runs from her. There are no apprehension dogs in my county. Its violent, but not so nuch to leo's.. yet? She is scent specific, but is trained to work from all sorts of scent articles.. rocks, screwdrivers, another persons clothing that they touched (like in an adsault), footprints, body fluids, etc...typically on a burg/crim mischief, etc, suspect touched something. If its contaminated, as long as we can rule out the contaminates (i.e. homeowner, etc), its potentially doable. I know other leo hound handlers who do this. Like I said tho, we are just starting down this road. Politics, politics.

I know of a lot of SAR trailing dog handlers who run criminal trails for l.e.


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## Phil Dodson (Apr 4, 2006)

Track contamination with my fellow LEO's is an everyday occurance. Despite every effort they just don't want to wait for K-9 . I don't know if it is an ego thing or not. On more than one occasion my partners over the years have trailed right up to the officer who contaminated the scene.
As far as off lead goes, I pull my teams off the street for a couple of days once a year to go back on line. We work wooded non distraction tracks to get their nose back down and clean up any bad habits they may have picked up. The tracks are usually 20 to 30 minutes old and a little longer than our street tracks. Both dog and handler seem to enjoy it.


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