What is mantrailing?

Why is this happening?

However, even the most subtle sense of smell will not help a dog without appropriate training to effectively search, for example, for children lost in the forest.

Methodics asked

Currently, there are two main terms for trained tracking dogs, trekking and trailing, and, accordingly, two different schools of training for sniffer dogs. Tracking dogs are trained to follow the prints of the person they are looking for. Track to track. This type of training teaches the dog to follow the track with minimal deviation from the “track”. However, such a search is a monotonous and rather difficult job for the animal, which requires special attention and the ability to work “nose down”, which tires the dog. The main purpose of training such search animals is to search and collect evidence in a case.

Trailing dogs are allowed to follow an individual scent not mechanically, but instinctively, not exactly following all the loops of the trail, but only following the general direction. Such a training technique allows you to expand the search area, use dogs to search for already “cooled down” and trampled tracks. A trained trailing dog works much faster than a tracking dog, but the accuracy of the search is lower.

Benefits of mantrailing

Mantrailing is the pursuit of a person by a dog by his individual scent. During training according to this method, dogs are trained only to follow the smell of a person, and not to look for it or to inform the instructor that the desired smell is not in the study area.

This technique has a number of advantages, including the use of sniffer dogs in different areas, including “contaminated” odors; more confident work on surfaces such as asphalt and concrete, use and two to three days after the loss of a person. Dogs trained according to this technique do not get tired so quickly and are able to search for a trace without its physical prints – for example, if a child was carried in their arms or carried on a bicycle.

At the same time, the search for a dog trained according to this method is a real pleasure, and not a necessary, but tedious routine.

The disadvantage of mantrailing is that dogs cannot clearly show exactly where a person was going, trace his path as accurately as possible.

9 September 2019

Updated: 26 March 2020