TRACKING WITH SIAB - A MODULAR APPROACH

SCENT IN A BOTTLE

 

Det. Steve White
Seattle Police Department

Why would anybody want to go through all the trouble of making something so silly as “scent in a bottle” to teach a dog to track? After all, dogs have been successful hunters on their own for as long as the species has existed. Man has trained dogs to track for hundreds of years without the benefit of spray bottles. The answer is we can never truly comprehend what the dog is smelling when we teach him to track, so we need something to get us on more even footing.

As a result, trainers all too often unintentionally train unproductive superstitious behaviors. What is worse, these behaviors are often indistinguishable from the real thing since humans cannot detect scent the way a dog can. We blithely walk behind our dogs thinking for all the world they're tracking when in fact they're faking us out. Worse yet, sometimes we may suspect our dogs are not tracking reliably, yet we keep doing the same things over and over again in hopes they'll have a different result.

Operant tracking with SIAB reduces the effect of many of things that lead to superstitious behaviors. In addition we can tailor our style of tracking to suit our needs. A deep nosed Schutzhund or AKC type footstep-for-footstep tracker is as easy to produce as a fast police style trailer. We can eliminate reliance on vegetation, bush hunting, and overshooting of corners.

Although the initial learning curve can seem pretty steep with SIAB tracking, once the dog gets the idea progress comes at an amazing clip. The really exciting part is how quickly newly trained dogs have equaled veterans. With older methods the transition from newly trained to veteran was all too often a nightmare. This was in part because we unintentionally trained our dogs to follow ground disturbance scent. New knowledge of scent and its properties makes it simple to avoid this. Please note I said simple, not easy. There is a difference.

Human scent has physical properties that we now know make it possible to control the amount and placement of scent on a track. Two major components of scent are skin rafts, and associated chemicals produced by and applied to the human body. These are normally transferred to the track by direct contact and broadly to the trail by dispersion through the air until they settle on the ground. If you could find a way to concentrate these components near the track you could help the dog in the early stages of its training. Here's how to put concentrated scent on the track, and how to fade away reliance on that concentration. Early on you can lay your own SIAB tracks, or use someone known to, and liked by, the dog. Later you'll just have to treat the tracking of other persons as another criterion shift.

  1. Have your tracklayer wear a T- shirt while he works out, works around the house, or engages in some strenuous activity. He should not wear any cologne, deodorant, or use antibacterial soap.
  2. In a clean bucket, have the tracklayer soak the above T- shirt in distilled water rather than tap water. Chlorination in tap water kills bacteria on the skin rafts, and thereby eliminates a major component of human scent.
  3. Wring the shirt out and pour the resulting “scent” laden water into a spray bottle. To save time and effort, use a pump type pressurized garden sprayer, but a regular trigger spray bottle will do for short tracks. Whichever bottle you use, make sure it used for that purpose only, and has never had chemicals in it.
  4. You can vary the concentration of the “scent” solution by raising the dilution of the mix. In the beginning one T-shirt to a gallon ought to do.
  5. You can vary the concentration of the resulting spray by adjusting the sprayer from a tight stream to a fine mist, and by raising the height from which you spray. In the beginning start with a tight stream and the nozzle very close to the ground (six inches or so).

Application of Scent in a bottle (Operant Tracking)

  1. Start tracking in a large paved parking lot when there are no other people (or cars) there. This will give you a couple of side benefits
    1. Your dog cannot become reliant on crushed vegetation as his primary scent source on a track/trail, and b) There will weak residual human scent in the area and early on your dog will be exposed to scent discrimination as necessary part of tracking/trailing.
  2. Map out your tracks using painted stall lines as landmarks for legs and turns. Since you won't hide a person or object at the end of the track you might want to track into the wind during these early stages. Make your first tracks short with only one leg, maybe 20 yards long out in the middle of the parking lot.
  3. Lay this first track by spraying a tight stream of “scent in a bottle” on the ground in front of you as you shuffle over the area you spray a foot or so in front of you. This way you'll not only get the benefit of the scent in the spray, but the moisture acts an adhesive for the normally occurring components of scent. Walk back to the start of the track in such a way that your scent does not blow back on to the SIAB track.
  4. Harness and lead up the dog, and bring him to the start of the track and give him a few seconds to investigate the area and odor. Do not give a track command. Instead, give the dog the length of the lead and let him do his thing. Silently wait for the dog to offer any attention to the track. As soon as he does give your Conditioned Reinforcer followed by your Primary Reinforcer (hereafter CR/PR). You may have to shape just for attention to the area of the track if you've got a dog that seems oblivious to this new scent-rich puddle in his environment. However, most dogs want to follow the scent, if for no other reason than curiosity.

Advanced SIAB track:
Zero concentration
36” from ground
Mist

This is the final step before you get rid of the water completely. Basically, you just walk through a little water mist. Once your dog is working dry tracks you're ready to introduce other surfaces. Relax old criteria by going back SIAB with a tighter, lower stream and asking for shorter periods of tracking on the new surface.

Experiments conducted at seminars with large groups of dogs working under the same conditions indicate that for many dogs the addition of scent to the water may be unnecessary. Distilled water alone may be enough. I don't know whether this is because water alone creates enough salience, or that it acts as a hydrator and adhesive for skin rafts. I suspect that it is a combination of factors. I have taken to using this approach with my own dogs, since the means there is one less variable to fade from the shaping process.

Still others prefer to maximize salience by using hot dog juice instead of human components. More power to them, but I would stress that it should probably only be used for dogs which show absolutely zero interest in water enhanced or SIAB tracks. Otherwise, they run the risk of training a superstitious behavior and may have to contend with first order learning issues when the dog faces difficult tracks later in its career.

I any case, I urge you to experiment with SIAB and/or water enhanced tracks. Even if you choose not to use them as a tool for initial tracking shaping, they can be valuable remedial tools for operational dogs struggling with hard surfaces.

SIAB CHECKLIST

You'll need:

  • Clean bucket and a clean garden sprayer
  • Sweaty T-shirt
  • Distilled water No chlorine
  • Empty parking lot
  • An established CR/PR pair
  • Primary reinforcers Things go faster with food, but you can use a toy if you prefer
  • 6' Lead with a collar or harness
  • Tracklayer You can lay your own, if you don't do it too often

Tracklaying with SIAB

  • Start with a strong concentration
  • Start with a tight stream
  • Shuffle directly over the sprayed area
  • Fade dilution first
  • Increase spray width
  • Increase spray height
  • Spray intermittently
  • Touch up corners
  • Change surface with added SIAB

Shaping tracking

  CR/PR for proximity

  CR/PR for attention to scent

  CR/PR for attention in the right direction

  CR/PR for movement in the right direction

  Withhold forward progress for errors

  CR/PR for ANY great behavior Don't just wait 'til the end

  Use all your senses Listen for sniffing too

  Use a “Keep Going” CR

  Jackpot liberally

  Add the cue much later

 

Copyright 2002 Steve White.   ptswhite@charter.net  All rights reserved.  “Every handler gets the dog he deserves.”  Motto:  RAF K9.  Originally published by the United States Police Canine Association.  Published here with permission of author.

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