An essential component of the RCI and IPO disciplines (today known as IGP), tracking assesses a dog's ability to follow a precise scent trail over natural terrain, with a technical demand level well above that of simple scent searching.
The principle
The dog must follow a trail previously laid by a tracklayer, keeping its nose to the ground, indicating the objects placed along the course, and respecting the trail's changes of direction without deviating. Unlike mantrailing, discussed earlier, which isolates one individual scent among others, RCI/IPO tracking works on a fresh, recent trail, with a strictly codified evaluation protocol.
Levels of difficulty
The discipline is organized into several levels of increasing complexity: trail length, number of direction changes, age of the trail ("aged" trails for advanced levels), and number of objects to indicate.
A discipline of precision, not speed
Unlike disciplines such as agility or flyball where speed comes first, tracking above all rewards precision and consistency: a dog that moves too quickly along the trail at the expense of tracking accuracy is penalized just as much as a hesitant or imprecise dog.
Which breeds excel at tracking
German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois traditionally dominate this discipline within RCI/IPO clubs, but any breed with a good nose and sustained powers of concentration can excel at it, in keeping with what we discussed regarding mantrailing.
A foundation useful beyond sport
The fundamentals of RCI/IPO tracking (sustained scent concentration, precise trail-following) share many common points with the skills sought in search-and-rescue dogs or detection dogs covered in our previous articles — a natural bridge for dogs and handlers looking to move into these professional disciplines.
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