Cycle of Operations -

 

   I was visiting with an old handler friend of mine, and we got talking about what was truly needed for a dog to have a successful trail.   Though it is easy to add many different things onto the list, the purpose of the conversation was, if something goes wrong how do you determine what it was and how do you fix it.  We reasoned that the following had to be in place for the trail to be successful. 

 

1. Scent must be present of our Target person.

2. The Dog must be able to detect the odor of our target person.

3. The dog must be able to discriminate the odor.

4. The dog must have interest in searching for and finding the odor source.

5. The handler must be able to read the dog's body actions.

 

 So, in short, should you be working a trail and it goes bad.  You should be able to review this short list on the Cycle of Operations list, then decide what is truly the problem.  From there a real plan can be put in place to address this, and you can continue on with a good dog.

 

Happy trailing