Police K-9 Magazine - September/October 2010

immediately from a woman named Asuka, a veterinarian employed by the Conservancy. She was looking for trailing dogs that could be trained to help their ranger unit track poachers in Mara Triangle, a 510-square-kilometer wildlife reserve within Masai Mara Game Reserve. After trying for three years to acquire puppies from a Kenyan breeder without success, they had expanded their search to the United States.

Although we routinely receive e-mails about trailing and tracking training, rarely does an overseas inquiry come to fruition. Little did we know that this was the start of a compelling adventure and the training experience of a lifetime.

good working lines and began training them in January 2009. We planned to travel to Kenya at the end of May.

From photographs of the Mara Conservancy, we devel-
oped an idea of the terrain the dogs would be working in.
We used a combination of food tracks and scent trails to
start the pups’ training, giving them experience in scent
work and ground disturbance. As the dogs pro-
gressed in basic trailing skills, we focused on rural
terrain training trails with as many animal
distractions as we could find. We combined
that training with hard-surface work. We
worked and trained the dogs five to six days
per week from January to the end of May,
making sure they had a solid foundation before
arriving in Kenya to start the handler training.
We trained the dogs to pick up a trail from a
simple foot track, knowing that would be the main
scent source available to the handlers and dogs
during a poaching deployment. We also trained using
various scent items. As the dogs advanced, we added cross
and split trails to the regimen to introduce some scent-
discrimination training. Armed with a little information
from the Mara Conservancy, we fine-tuned the training by
having our trail layers emulate poacher behaviors and
capture and evasion techniques while laying trails.

As our departure date approached, the details of shipping the dogs to Kenya became a paperwork nightmare. We had

Kenya

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The Journey Begins

The Mara Conservancy had a shoestring budget and was trying to fund the project with donations. As avid supporters of wildlife, John and I decided to support their efforts by donating our time to train the Bloodhounds at our home in Colorado for five months. Then we would take the dogs to Kenya to train the handlers in their own environment. It was an excellent opportunity for us to gain experience with training in another culture and in a totally different environment. The Mara Conservancy agreed to pay for our travel expenses, accommodations, and food. It seemed like a win–win situation for all concerned.