How can I lose or evade a tracking dog?

Question

The weather here gets into the low 100's during the day and the upper 80's at night. Some "friends" of mine are going to try and find me with their tracking hounds. I'm going to have a 5 hour headstart before they know to start looking for me. Any tips on what to do and how to prepare myself before and during my flight would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Not sure...maybe just google your question and see what they say.

Answer 2

LOL Good luck, Ive only seen a guy lose a bloodhound once and that was when he really ran a tough trail in the city limits with alot of other people and smells, but a staright track through woods, no way, even trying tactics such as, crossing water or showering backtracking, climbing a tree, hiding using pepper or colone to cover a scent just doesnt work. Have fun, but u will be found.

Answer 3

Are they "tracking" dogs, "air scenting" dogs or "trailing" dogs?

LOL some folks seem to lump them all together, but they are different.

A tracking dog follows your path exactly, smelling where you walked, an air scenting dog ranges back and forth smelling the air to find you, a trailing dog combines both techniques.

A tracking dog can track across pavement, brush, you name it, but it is easier to track you through brush/grass. If you cross water the handler will try the dog on the opposite side of the water.

Because a tracking dog needs a point where you were "last seen" you might be able to lose them if you can get up in the trees and move from tree to tree a good distance from where you last had your feet down. The age of the trail impacts tracking dogs more than air scenting dogs.

The air scenting dog is gonna get you even if you cross water because it is following your scent in the air. A properly trained air scenting dog can find something as small as a tooth or a drop of blood or even a dead body submerged in running water. This dog heads for the highest concentration of human scent and doesn't need to follow your path exactly.
Age of the trail is not as important.

Because an air scenting dog is not following a specific person's PATH, but trying to find a concentration of human scent I wonder if you could throw it off a bit by carrying a big bag of someone else's dirty laundry and leaving it someplace and heading downwind as fast as possible. If the dog isn't looking just for YOU then it will head for the biggest concentration of scent.

I would make sure you have plenty of water, cell phone and all the other stuff you should have for a hike in the woods. If these are well trained tracking dogs they should be able to find you but it might take a while.

Letting the track age 5 hours makes me wonder if they are trailing dogs that use a combo of techniques---if so neither of my ideas is worth a hill of beans LOL

Good luck and have fun.

POST if you find out if the are straight "Tracking" dogs, okay?

Answer 4

Good luck.. Dogs smell differently than we do ... WHen you smell a pizza, you smell the whole pizza.. A dog smells cheese, and dough and tomato and bacon.. he breaks down the smells into their individual flavours so to speak.
Plus they are not only smelling YOU, they are also smelling where you broke up the ground, broke off the branch. How you changed the environment around you.
Not only that, but you are dropping dead skin as you move and run.. unless you will be covered completely from head to toe, you will not leave the woods the same way it was when you arrived.. You will always leave part of you behind for the dogs to find.
Dogs know how to judge how far over the breeze is blowing your scent.. When you run thru water you are still disrupting the environment and leaving your scent.. it just moves over to the shore.. if you run down a road, your scent will fall down into the ditch..

Your chance would be to have a car sitting somewhere, jump into the car and take off.. BUT dogs can also follow your scent .. it just makes it much harder...

Take a 2nd pair of shoes w/ you that you have never touched. Keep your face and all your skin covered and contained as much as possible.

Water isn't a big deal to dogs really. Cadaver dogs can ride in a boat and can smell the bubbles of a dead body at the bottom of the lake... as the bubbles come to the surface...

Answer 5

Wow that's a really tough thing to do. With it being so hot your sweat will be everywhere.
Water won't do as DP said and maybe the pepper as St.Lady suggested but I would think your sweating would soon have that off of you. Maybe if you hide a bike or a small riding vehicle some where and take off for a few hundred yards.
Unless you could swing from tree to tree to throw the dog off. LOL I don't know. But it does sound like a fun challenge.

I would love to know how it turns out!

Answer 6

Haven't seen this one mentioned, so here goes a take-off on the song...obtain the scent of a female or two in heat. Go two hours in any direction, spraying liberally, then, head three hours in the opposite direction of where you started, and where you sprayed the scent. Fantasy plays a huge part in this scenario. I would never say, "tie real dogs to trees", and don't know if such a product even exists. I'd be interested in knowing what the two true dog experts who've posted answers to this think of this strategy. Anyway, hope they're more bark than bite.

Answer 7

Only thing I can suggest is do not use soap w a scent, collogne and go in water..When you sweat it will be easy for them to find you. We have friends w tracking dogs and even water didnt stop them because they were smart enough to know that what goes in one side of the water comes out the other and if they have a cold nose they'd be able to smell your scent over a creek.

We dont own tracking dogs persay but we do own bird dogs with cold noses and you can NEVER hide something from them they do not give up.

Answer 8

I saw the Mythbusters episode on dogs too.
Pretty amazing that they couldn't evade a well trained tracking dog.

Answer 9

I sure hope you're not an inmate doing research. I really don't know. I have heard of water but, then again there are hounds used for underwater rescue. I believe the water has to be swiftly moving in order for it to throw the dogs off? I really don't know how it can be done especially since you are talking hot weather and scent hounds. You will be leaving your scent everywhere. I also heard Cayenne pepper but, you don't want to hurt your friends dogs.

Answer 10

There was a mythbusters I watched about this. Don't try pepper or anything like that, they can still find you. However the dog had trouble finding them when the run away went up a stream. It also found it imensly difficult to find someone in a busy city like San Francisco.

Answer 11

I would say try to distract them with rabbits or tennis balls, but they'll find the source.

The only way I can think of is devious like that - instead of trying to screw up their tracking, try to distract the hounds. Can you release foxes or something? That might work.

Okay, not really, not if they're focused. A bloodhound's sense of scent is an expert witness in a court, so good luck.

Get on an airplane, if you can. In five hours you could be across the country.