Practice searches for Cheeto and Kody

Cheeto is one of our Target Cats.  He is a good-natured fellow, and he usually hides for the cat detection dogs.  On Saturday, 1/22, Cheeto walked a short trail so that Kelsy could find him.  Kelsy is not a cat detection dog, since that is a different process, but she will look for cats if they leave a trail in a dog-like manner.  Cats do occasionally act like dogs.  This fresh trail was about 200 feet long, and at the end, Kat was standing about 30 feet away from Cheeto's carrier.  Kelsy used the other carrier as a scent article, and she stuffed her whole head inside, vacuuming up scent from the bedding.  Then she pulled me right along, following Cheeto's footsteps exactly.  When Kelsy caught sight of Kat, she charged right over to her, but when she didn't find Cheeto, she went back to using her nose.  Kelsy tracked down Cheeto in seconds, and seemed quite happy about it.  I rewarded her with cheese.

Our main purpose of the afternoon was to follow the trail of Kody, laid two days earlier.  This was an unusual trail in a couple of respects.  First, I was the one who walked Kody on the trail, which is not the way we usually do it.  Second, most of the trail consisted of a dead-end out and back.  I had intended to walk a loop, but the trail through the park did not have an outlet, that I could find.  Although the trail is 1.23 miles long, if a dog were smart, she could find the target dog by making a left turn and running a trail only about half a mile long.  It was an accident that the trail was mostly one big dead end, but it made a useful test of dog behavior.  Would Kelsy choose the shortest route?  Or would she follow all of the dead end?  My prediction was that she would follow the entire dead end because that would have double the scent, both out and back, and smell fresher compared to the branch that leads more directly to the target dog.

Weather conditions:
Now for Kent, WA (98031)

Temp: 48F
Feels like: 48F
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 76%
Wind: WNW at 2 mph
Updated: 1/22/11 3:25 PM PST

Trail that Kody ran:

Name:		Track 025
Date:		Jan 20, 2011 6:41 pm
Map: (valid until Jul 23, 2011)		View on Map
Distance:		1.23 miles
Elapsed Time:		33:39.7
Avg Speed:		2.2 mph
Max Speed:		6.3 mph
Avg Pace:		27' 29" per mile
Min Altitude:		6 ft
Max Altitude:		107 ft
Start Time:		2011-01-21T02:41:48Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.382625º N
	Longitude:	122.226711º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.383031º N
	Longitude:	122.226832º W

Kelsy started this trail following Kody's exact footsteps (and mine).  After about two blocks, she reached the intersection of the trails where she could either go straight and run the whole dead end, or she could turn left and go directly back to the target dog at the end of the trail.  Kelsy went straight.  She didn't even check the branch to the left.  She took me all the way through the woods, along the creek, over logs and through mud.  At the end of the trail, Kelsy stopped almost exactly where Kody and I stopped.  Then she tried going farther through the bushes, checking for scent.  We came back a few yards and she tried to the right and the left, looking for a continuation of Kody's scent trail.  Then she started back the way we came.  When she got back to the Y, she took the branch leading to the end of the trail, and not the one leading back to the beginning.  From that point on, she pulled hard.  At the end, Pearl was in the parking lot as a distraction.  Kelsy went part way to Pearl, bet then she stopped and got back on track for Kody, finding her hidden behind a table.  Kelsy got more cheese for a reward, and a short session of fetch.  It took me 34 minutes to walk the original trail with Kody, and 38 minutes to walk the trail with Kelsy during the practice search.  This reinforces the notion that, if the dog you are looking for is still on the move, you will probably never catch up. 

After Kelsy, I ran Zeke on the same trail.  Like the last time I trained with Zeke, he did not want to spend any time at all with the scent article.  My impression is that he is saying: "I don't need no stinking scent article--I know what to look for."  I ended up covering his nose with the scent article for a second.  Despite his refusal of the scent article, he followed the trail exactly.  When he reached the Y, he also opted for the long dead end instead of taking the easy way, the short cut.  At the far end of the trail, he went just a little farther than Kelsy had.  On the return trip, Zeke checked for branch trails to the left and right about every 100 yards or so.  When we got back to the Y, he took the branch to the end, and not the branch back to the beginning.  At the parking lot, he did not go toward the decoy dog at all.  He went straight for Kody.  Zeke refused his usual hot dog treats, but he did like a little bit of smoky beef jerky.  Zeke also took 38 minutes to find Kody, just like Kelsy had. 

This isn't enough data to make a scientific claim about the way dogs follow scent trails, but it appears to me that the trailing dog will follow every dead end in the trail left by the missing dog.  Theoretically, the trailing dog could catch up to the missing dog by skipping all those dead ends where the wandering dog investigated an interesting smell down a path that led nowhere.  My reasoning for why the trailing dog seems to always choose the dead end is that the scent is double on the dead end when compared to the continuation of the path.  When we were looking for Tabu, Kelsy dipped into every single yard, making very slow progress.  I wished she would skip these diversions and stick to the main trail.  We never caught up to Tabu in five days of following her in circles.  I can't really see how you would get a dog to ignore dead ends.  She is supposed to follow the freshest, i.e. strongest, scent, and that will usually lead her down all the dead end paths.  The only way to ever catch up to a missing dog is if that dog stops and rests, or is captured by someone.