# Trailing and USAR



## julie allen (Dec 24, 2010)

In your opinion can a dog do both trailing and USAR effectively?


----------



## Jennifer Michelson (Sep 20, 2006)

There are many dogs doing wilderness (I do air scent) and disaster SAR. The bigger issue is cross training HRD and live find for USAR dogs.


----------



## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

I have a strong personal preference for single-purpose dogs.


----------



## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> I have a strong personal preference for single-purpose dogs.


Amen.

DFrost


----------



## Melody Greba (Oct 4, 2007)

julie allen said:


> In your opinion can a dog do both trailing and USAR effectively?


It is possible to have a dog that can trail and do usar. 

However, remember that usar is air scent work. A lot of dogs aren't going to want to trail if they can air scent. 

But some dogs pick up trailing naturally, to follow into the victim if they don't have wind advantage. 

Both goals is to find a live human at the end so it has nothing to do with a different find at the end, or the trained indication.

It depends on the dog.


----------



## julie allen (Dec 24, 2010)

Greta is 6 months old, and doing good with trailing, will air scent only towards the end. I have heard that you can, and heard not to, as well. I am interested in both.


----------



## Jennifer Michelson (Sep 20, 2006)

I am not sure if I had a trailing dog, I would want to do air scent as well. Mind you I have only done air scent, but I would worry that the air scenting would 'dilute' the trailing. If trailing is your main interest, I would probably stick to that. 

I have a young HRD dog who I would love to also train trailing with (I want to learn to train it), but I probably wont, because the HR is more important to me and I dont want to do anything to mess up the HR work.


----------



## mel boschwitz (Apr 23, 2010)

Jennifer Michelson said:


> I am not sure if I had a trailing dog, I would want to do air scent as well. Mind you I have only done air scent, but I would worry that the air scenting would 'dilute' the trailing. If trailing is your main interest, I would probably stick to that.
> I have a young HRD dog who I would love to also train trailing with (I want to learn to train it), but I probably wont, because the HR is more important to me and I dont want to do anything to mess up the HR work.



My older MR bloodhound will gladly air scent his way to the victim if conditions are right. I don't mean just at the end when he hits the scent pool, but I've seen him cut off hundreds of yards off the trail. He reminds me of a shark-if he can catch just one droplet of scent that is straight off the victim, rather then "trail scent", he'll leave the trail and air scent his way in, cutting off huge swaths of the trail. It doesn't seem to affect his trailing any if that is what the conditions lean towards.
But that's trailing/scent specific wilderness. And by no means is he a real air scent dog. I don't work him off lead-he has no refind or bark alert and there's no way I could keep up with him off lead. And by no means is he a USAR/disaster dog. And with all that bloodhound skin he's an absolute klutz. He can't see 2ft in front of him when his head is down, and he's constantly running into trees, etc..lol.. Not that he cares!
I have a dog that I will be training for USAR, and he will not be trained to trail. (Got 2 others who can do that!). 

And I would never train a dog for a second discipline until he was completely confirmed in the first discipline. 

I don't have a problem with dual purpose dogs (if the purposes are along the same lines) but do believe that a dog should be trained either live scent or dead scent, not cross trained on each. But that's JMO.


----------



## Sarah Atlas (Dec 15, 2008)

I prefer a single purpose dog myself


----------



## ray figueroa (Feb 2, 2011)

I agree!! Single purpose...


----------



## Domingo Kaller (Nov 19, 2009)

Depends on the dog ...


----------

