I learned the basic idea from a Danish police officer, when I visited him in Denmark. I had bought my police dog, Bolo, from him, and when I tried to do article (evidence) searching with him, I wasn't having much luck. Peter (my friend) taught me that the dog has to want to show it to ME, not have me tell him what to do. Later, Bolo developed into one of the best evidence searching dogs you ever saw.

When I started schutzhund training, I had others show me how to teach tracking and articles, and it never seemed to be as good as what Bolo did. I think I probably used the old Tom Rose idea, where you put a bunch of articles down on the ground, take your dog to them, make him platz, and then praise him.

Anyway, I titled a couple of dogs this way, and it was OK, but it wasn't until I put Peter's idea together with the schutzhund tracking articles that I really got somewhere.

In the mean time, I started to learn about operant conditioning and clicker training, and the idea of letting the dog offer behavior that was then rewarded, rather than just making him do something. I made many trials and observations trying to learn to break down the responses into individual parts, and to understand the individual criteria of a behavior. So, in using this method, it is important to know what exactly you are asking for and what the dog is giving you or what he thinks you want.

Here is the approach.

First, I teach an inducive down.

Short version, you put some food in your hand, let the puppy smell it, but not get it, and close your hand, bringing it to the floor. Hungry puppy with drive will try to figure out how to get it. Some will paw at it, bite at your hand, bark, sit, and some will even lie down right away.

Ignore all the unwnated behaviors, and reward the one you want. If it is a hardheaded or dominant puppy, you may have to start with rewarding a sit or a crouch toward a down. You must "mark" the behavior, either with a click, or a "yes!" or whatever sound you like, but it must be consistent and always mean "you are right."

So, if the puppy crouches toward a down, you say "Yes!" and open your hand and give the food. Next time, you will raise the criterion a tiny bit, and wait until he crouches lower before you say "Yes!"

You should be getting a down pretty quickly. Be sure to stay quiet. Don't tell the puppy to down, or coax him. Just make sure he knows you have the food in your hand, and keep your hand on the floor. You might need to move it up to his nose once or twice for a "teaser" smell, but put it right back down, knuckles down, and wait. Just stare at your hand, not at the puppy. Keep sessions short, maybe 5 or 6 reetitions per session, and always when he is hungry.

When he is consistently giving you a down as soon as you put your hand on the floor, and in fact starts to offer the down even before you do it, you can give this behavior a name, and the name will be "Platz."

Now, start to gradually increase the distance from your hand to the floor, keeping everything else the same. Start with your hand one inch off the floor, say "platz" and look at your hand. Puppy will go down, open hand and feed. Next time, two inches off the ground, then four, then six, etc. There will come a distance, usually its about the height of your knee, that is critical. The puppy will have to decide to lie down, away from the hand, in order to get the "yes!" which signals that he will get the food.

Be patient here, and go slowly. Wait him out, and just stare at your hand. Don't keep saying "platz" but let him figure it out for himself. This is the most powerful learning. Your goal is to eventually stand straight up and have the puppy drop and wait for his food. Key: do not let the puppy pop up to get the food. Feed him in the down position and praise him there.

I know the purely clicker OC folks say that the click ends the behavior, so then the animal can jump up and come and get its reward, but I have not found that particularly useful in dog training. I think you need to have a reassurance word, like "good, that's right" or whatever, and then the mark word or sound.

Once you have the puppy doing the platz, and it won't take very long, then get some articles out and get ready to play.

Start with putting an article (use big square plain leather or cloth ones at first to keep it simple).

Put one on the ground in front of the puppy, and put your hand on top of it with the food in it.

He should down on it right away. DO NOT TELL HIM TO PLATZ.

As soon as he does, praise and feed him, touch the article and look at it, and say "Good find it."

Now, continue to stare at the article. The moment the puppy looks at it too, click (mark) and feed him.

Release, and now, place the article on the ground again and touch it. Don't tell the puppy what to do. Let him show you.

So, now you have done the down, and are starting to associate it with the article.

Once the puppy is downing on the article with your hand on it, start to move the article a few inches away and just stare at it. You have to play act a little here and look at the article like it is the coolest thing you ever saw. As soon as the puppy shows interest in it too, mark ( "yes" ) and reward him.

Now move it a little further away, and as he looks at it, touch it. He should move toward it.

Be careful not to look at the puppy, especially if you have done focus training with food, asking him to look at your face.

If you do, he will think he is rewarded just for the attention here too.

Also be careful to distinguish the down response from the looking at the article response. You do NOT want him lying down because your hand is near the ground, or because you have food or because you say "platz."

You want him to show you the article in exactly the same way a kid will tug at your sleeve to get your attention when he wants you to buy him something he sees in the store.

You want him to say "hey...Hey...HEY!!! Look!"

So be sure you are not marking the wrong response. This is where this method gets lost on a lot of people and they don't think it works because they are actually teaching the dog to respond to a down cue (however subtle) rather than to cherish the article as a "ticket" to the food.

You can test whether it is working by placing an article down a few feet to one side of the puppy, then tapping the floor right in front of him. If he looks at, and preferably dives for the article and downs, he has it. If he lies down where you tap, and looks at you, he doesn't, and you have taught him to respond to a down cue, rather than the presence and location of the article.

Sometimes I will test and put one down and let her down on it, then move it away and ask "where is it? Show me." She should go right to it like it was a magnet, no matter where I put it. I work within a small radius of about 3-4 feet at first, and then start putting them on baby tracks.

The whole point of this method is that you are not telling the dog where the article is, he is telling YOU, and that is the behavior I want.

Later, you'll teach him some scent discrimination this way, and he will learn it is about how the thing smells, not how it looks.

I have my 51/2 month old puppy downing on eyeglasses, shoulder pads, combs, and gloves on the track. She pounces on them and guards them with her little life!

As for working tracks with articles with very young dogs, I don't do it all the time, because I want to keep that drive going for the track itself. I throw some in every once in a while, and I don't make a big fuss if she goes past one. I just stop and ask her to show me where the "find it" is, reward her, and then let her continue tracking.

This works for a dog with high drive, and helps build drive in dogs with less drive, because they see the article as all positive and fun. They become the goal of the track, something to search for, which is how they are wired anyway, to scent and follow spoor, to locate their quarry. The article becomes an icon for the quarry.

This also works for slowing down a dog who is too fast. You put in a lot of corners with small article after the corners, and the dog will be more careful because he won;t want to miss his "find it."

Just watch carefully that you are not rewarding the wrong thing, and test to be sure. Another pitfall is having the dog start to believe that "find it" means "platz." Test this the same way as before. Put an article down away from the dog and say "Find it." if he searches and goes to it to down, you have done it right. If he lies down right there, you need to help him understand it is the article that is making the good stuff happen. Look at it, touch it, move it around so that he gets the idea that THAT is what buys him his goodie.

Do NOT put food on the article, but do feed him there.

Reprinted with permission from an email by Julia Priest. Julia, a former K9 officer, has titled many dogs in Schutzhund. In 2002 she won the National FH Championship with her homebred bitch, Ira von Sontausen.