# Marking



## Gerald Dunn (Sep 24, 2011)

I have a 4 year old Lab that is doing a good job finding the source if he is not peeing on everything. Started back in April and is doing good on all point except marking on everything. He is not neutered and if fed raw if any of that matters. 

Any ideas please


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

a little more background would help...
Q1. does the dog mark when on lead ?

be glad it's a male. females who mark have been harder for me to fix; but that's just my experience of course


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

Q2. is he only marking when he is "doing a good job finding the source" ?


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## Jim Delbridge (Jan 27, 2010)

Take your dog on lots of negatives either with an e-collar or a long line. Put the dog to work knowing there is nothing out there for it to find. (know your dog's time limit/endurance to find and consider stretching this out with this exercise as well....have an area nearby with a source for the dog to "come upon" when it appears to be giving up.)

Any time the dog starts to mark, correct with the long-line or e-collar. My correction is "No Mark"

Working in a negative area, you are sure the dog is marking on critter scent or politicking, neither of which you are interested in when searching. I'd do this routinely at least twice a week for a while.

On the planted find, pay attention to your winds. You can work the dog upwind of the source and then change course to downwind when you want it to make a find. And, of course, make sure it doesn't mark on your source either.

I was an evaluator years ago for a yearly seminar where I brought in the sources. Their standards said, "one source is surface or elevated no higher than six feet", "another source may be buried no deeper than six inches." Distractions were permissible. The hosts came with me and the other evaluator and went crazy with our distractions. We placed one source in a hollow trunk three feet above a gully. We placed another source one inch under soil within a foot of a bush with lots of drooping branches spread around it. The first dog that came into the area urinated 18 inches from the buried source. All subsequent dog teams had their dog mark over the first dog's scent. All subsequent handlers jerked their dogs away and yelled similar corrections to "no mark." All nine failed. Of the nine, 7 found the source in the trunk. One found it when her dog yanked the suet cage out of the trunk after destroying the trunk, looked at it, went "yuck" and tossed it back in. She then flagged the Earl's Rib Shack "port rib bones" 8 feet away that the hosts had buried six inches into the side wall of the gully below. *shrug* One can never tell what handlers will do. One handler found the source in the trunk then wasted the rest of his 30 minutes looking up as the sun had hit the trees and the scent from the source he'd found was chimneying up the trees. As he was 6 foot 2 inches, I asked him why he kept looking up. He said he was looking for sources. I asked if he understood when we read him the standards just prior to the test what our limitations were. He nodded and continued to burn the next 20 minutes with his dog going up all the trees. Handlers tend to become much dumber when testing, myself included.

My point is this, break your dog of urinating when searching as it might not only burn you, but everyone else that works that area as well. Break it out of scent.

Jim Delbridge


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

- urinating is of course not the same as marking
- any dog should water the grass and eliminate b4 it starts working, and that should be a simple check off item
- imo no trained dog should be allowed to piss/poop whenever and wherever it chooses. if you have decent control over feeding and watering this should rarely become a problem. in a lot of situations working hard in weather, a dog has to drink and has to pee eventually ... also shouldn't be a problem, and all my dogs have learned to "hold it" quite a long time if needed

- with some details, this would probably not be a difficult problem to correct, but i would hesitate to just say "correct the dog" and be done with it until i knew more.　

- i've had dogs who were obsessive long term markers (30 times in 30 places in minutes) fixed in a couple days
- i've never seen it as a dog problem due to diet or being intact, etc., unless the dog was sick. it's always been a handler problem
- if it's healthy, don't blame the dog. they mark cause they CAN, and are allowed to, and "sometimes" it becomes an obsessive habit and/or problem if conditioned
- if you are working around a bunch of dogs all you can hope to do is control the one with you


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## Terrasita Cuffie (Jun 8, 2008)

I see it in stressed dogs--males or bitches. Like Rick, a little more detail or a video would be helpful. What happens when its a question of duration, difficulty level etc.

T


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## Gerald Dunn (Sep 24, 2011)

have tried 15 and 30 ft leashes and all that happens is he ether shuts down or I get tangled up in the dame things all so leashes shuts down the want to find it in him


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## Jim Delbridge (Jan 27, 2010)

Working a long-line is a learned skill, but simply go work fields that border woods. The point is not for him to be searching while on the long line, but to extinguish the marking via an established correction. As with any training, timing is everything. He starts to show signs of marking, you give the long line a yank while saying your correction. The dog moves on and you verbally praise....the physical and verbal correction should happen simultaneously. Once he associates the two, you can lose the long line and resume off-lead searches. This is why a lot of people fall back to e-collars, i.e. they can't work the long-line. For those of us old farts pre-e-collars, it was a necessary evil.

Jim


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## David Winners (Apr 4, 2012)

I mark and reward pissing to put it on verbal cue, BREAK. Then do as suggested via corrections when not on cue during a search. I start this in the break area where all the dogs do their business, then move to known blank areas.

Great advice so far. Nothing else to add.

David Winners


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## rick smith (Dec 31, 2010)

re "have tried 15 and 30 ft leashes and all that happens is he ether shuts down or I get tangled up in the dame things all so leashes shuts down the want to find it in him"

hard time digesting this sentence, but sounds like you might have other problems besides marking and learning how to handle a long lead

i have a hard time understanding why you wouldn't want to eliminate the marking problem BEFORE you start tracking him and not have to deal with that distraction when he is on scent
- i can't believe the only time he starts marking is when he is tracking ... if it is it would be a first for me, so i guess there is always a first time ... can you clarify the problem ?

that's why i hesitated to start giving advice on how to stop marking WHILE tracking

suggest a good start might be listing what you have done that hasn't worked so far


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## Sarah Platts (Jan 12, 2010)

rick smith said:


> that's why i hesitated to start giving advice on how to stop marking WHILE tracking


Rick, 

I don't think he's tracking with the dog. He says the dog is real good with finding source which I'm reading to be cadaver. Had to chuckle over the long line comment because Jim's right - it's a learned skill. The OP might consider using a flexi instead of a long line if they can handle that better.


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