Customer Reviews

Scent and the Scenting Dog

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was first introduced to Scent and the Scenting Dog in 1973 when I went through the Seattle Police K-9 Academy. I found it to be the only text to present the facts of scent and scentwork in a scientific manner. The underlaying source information is footnoted and verifiable.This book presents the facts of scent and avoids simplistic methods. It demonstrates to the practitioner the scent evidence available to the dog under differing circumstances and what methods of application/training are likely to succeed. It also describes the physiology of the dog's olfactory system, giving the reader a factually based understanding of the dog's ability and power to receive scent. It is as accurate and valuable today as when it was written. I relied upon this book as a police dog handler, and retained it as a text when teaching future handlers through a 20 year career.

Thorough and easy to understand explanation of human and vegetative scents, their relevance to search dog training, and the ways their properties affect searches and are affected by influences such as heat and snow. A well researched and presented argument for air searching over tracking and trailing. I'd like to see a similarly clear and easily understood essay by Mr Syrotuck on passive and pro-active narcotic dog training. I found this manual fascinating and full of invaluable information.

This was a great book for theory. Helps you to understanding what you might be seeing when those seemingly unexplainable things happen on the track. It won't teach you to track at all, but it will help you understand the mechanics of your dogs senses and scent. This was the missing link for me.

This book allows the first time as well as sesioned police dog handler the inside look at what scent is and how is effects the way the dog is used.

I have to disagree with the other reviewers about the value of this book, especially the theoretical part. First, the book is way long on theory, by which I mean at least 70% deals with topics unrelated to *dogs* smelling or finding scent or being trained. Rather, we have to sit through long discussions on topics such as "what is a nose?" Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but it does go into what is a cell, who discovered cells and when. What I know of the science they present is wrong and that makes me question the reliability of the rest. For instance, they give us a theory of scent (published in 1952) in which there are alleged to be 7 kinds of receptors for scents - oh please. The book was written before G-proteins were appreciated and it was known there are many many proteins specialized to recognize each scent, so the author is simply wrong. And by the way - who cares?
What *is* excellent about this book is the distinction between "rafts" of odor (generated by the body, more robust and shorter lasting) and "vegetative" odors (caused by the crushing of vegetation and disturbance of soil) and how these are used for tracking (dog has nose smack on the trail very close to the ground) vs trailing (dog can be yards off the trail, generally downwind), vs. air scent, using the scent of the target only. Unfortunately, this material is squeezed into a small portion of the booklet (pp. 71-88; Chapter 9, "Working dogs on scent"). When it comes to training procedures for the puppy with a gifted nose (or an ambitious owner) and avoiding errors in training a pup, the author does not give anything useful: "Careful training by a knowledgeable handler can prevent this." No games or exercises are offered. So at this time I am still searching for a book that discusses *training* a dog to track or trail.