How to Train Tracking Dogs

In the old days, tracking dogs learned to hunt and find people that way. When we started getting into a more urbanized environment,. the dogs wanted to find grass. And it was really hard to teach them to focus on the less distinct disturbance when they walk across concrete or asphalt. So now the classically conditioned reason to put their nose on the ground is because you're depositing volatile organic compounds everywhere you walk. You lose 50 million skin cells a day, 40,000 a minute. We paired it with food so that they had a reasons to follow it.