Training Level I Tracking Dogs for Police - S&R

Level I Tracking

Country Tracking

There are two types of tracking: "footstep tracking" and "tracking through drive." Footstep tracking is taught with food and a ball. It is designed for sport dogs. Tracking thru drive is designed for service dogs. Here the dog is taught to follow the track at a dead run and there is always a man at the end of every track. Tracking thru drive is the only way to train a police service dog.

If you are a K9 officer who trains his service dog with food and a ball you already know that you only catch 3% or 4% of the people you track. The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) catch 45% to 50% of all the people they track (this includes suburban and urban tracking). If a suspect runs in the country, they catch 95% of them.

This two-hour video was filmed in Alberta, Canada at the police dog training center for the RCMP. The RCMP instructors are the best tracking dog instructors in the world. They have been training police tracking dogs since 1935. I filmed three videos with them. This is the first video. This video will show how the RCMP can train a dog (in 60 training tracks) to follow a 1-hour-old, 5 KM unknown track that contains backtracks, road crossings, fence crossings, and articles.

The RCMP has 3 Levels of tracking. This video covers Level One or tracking in a rural environment. Levels two and three deals with Urban and Suburban Tracking.

I have had literally hundreds of K9 officers call or write and say, "This is the only way to train a police dog to track." They wish they had seen this video when starting to train their dogs. Many officers have said, "This training method put the fire back into my police dog. Now he enjoys tracking and we are catching people that used to get away."