i want to do tracking with my 9 month old rottie, what is right way to start him off?

Someone on these boards once recommended:

Terry Hadley's "A Tracking Manual" - hardback, £15.99 from www.k9education.co.uk and also Roy Hunter's "NOsework for Fun

Don't know if these are any help

Nosework for Fun is great for pet owners, Terry H's book is more for those who want to be "serious" ;) although the first i think is brillliant anyway!

and should still be availalble from www.crosskeysbooks.com

You will need a harness, a long tracking line, 2 poles (electric fence poles or what i call "pig tails" - the light yellow ones available from most country stores.) in fact i think we used 3 poles to start, the last marks the end of the track but that isn'tused for long.

If you do a search on here, it has been discussed a few times :)

I tend to start with my back to the prevailing wind so that the dog really learns to get its nose down for an article and on the track, but as both progress, you have to track with the wind anywhere! There are a few different ways to go about it, a bit like more than one road leads to Rome!

Lindsay

The best book ever written about training a tracking dog is The Tracking Dog by Glen Johnson, considered the Bible of us Working Trial enthusiasts.  I would strongly recommend buying it if you are serious about taking up tracking and reading it several times before you consider starting training your dog.  His method if followed religiously (which is quite time consuming) will produce a reliable consistent tracking dog.

If you are in the UK you need to be aware that our goals are slightly different to the US and that instead of 1 large article at the end in TD there are 3 fairly small ones and so you must train your dog to be article conscious.  The best place to go for advice is a good WT group and go and watch a few trials to see the standard you need to aspire to!

HTH

thank you for posting