Hunt 'em Up!

Training a dog to blood trail can start around 10-12 weeks for some but definitely by week 17. And by this age they should be showing an interest in following a small liver drag. Start these drags with young pups with a small 5-10 yard drag of either a liver or a piece of hide with blood on it. This is just something to get the puppies used to using their nose. You want to see a puppy that has a drive to follow the line even at this age. Do not worry so much at an early age about obedience training. Getting them started on developing their nose is more important at this time and obedience can be taught after they have started working their nose on a regular basis.As the dog picks up on these liver drags you can switch over to short blood trails. Once they are consistent with the short lines you can start laying out straight trails over 100 yards with ample amounts of blood. Age the track (leave it alone) about 2 Hours at this point. You should lay some tracks on bare dirt which forces the dog to breathe in deeply to draw in the scent up off the ground, thus developing a dog with a "deep nose".The best teacher is time spent with the dog and a lot of it! Time spent in the field tracking through the season and training the rest of the year. This is what it takes to form a bond. And that bond is strengthen and reinforced in life's journey with our blood trail dog! If I gave you no more information than what's above you would have enough to get your dog started with blood trailing. But in reality, there is a lot more to be learned about tracking with a dog. So let's get started now to build a complete training course for your new blood trailing student.