What Makes a Great Mantrailing Dog?

Another day, another blog post.

Today I am thinking about what type of dogs might struggle with mantrailing initially, and which dogs may instantly feel super confident at understanding the task.

Generally, people seem to think that some breeds should be better at it than others, with the preconception that some dogs are smarter or more driven than others.

Smarter… yes, bigger dog, bigger brain… but that doesn’t mean that every GSD instantly gets it, or that every Chihuahua needs 10 sessions to understand what we want from them.

Dogs are individuals.

The breed does give me an indication of what to expect, and it is important to understand what breeds were bred to do, because those traits will usually show up when trailing, but it is not everything.

Drive is the other thing. People seem to think that only working breeds want to do stuff. I strongly disagree with this. Drive is something you can very much build, and in my experience, most pet dogs are bored and would love a task and some purpose rather than sitting around all day. There are rare exceptions, of course…

So what, in my opinion, could be a disadvantage at mantrailing?

Probably dogs with a lot of obedience training in their life.

This is not a bad thing, it is just something that needs to be considered when we are asking dogs to lead us. Some will literally not want to move without their owner moving first, usually gun dogs, because this has been trained into them. So we adjust and work on that later on.

Dogs that have been punished or told off a lot for following their nose, usually when hunting, might be pretty confused too when we ask them, for the first time, to just follow their nose.

These are all things to consider when first introducing the dog to the game, and I usually get a good idea pretty quickly by the way they behave.

So what would be really beneficial to help your dog become a fantastic mantrailer?

Doing any other nose sports with your dog.

Scent work, tracking… anything that works the dog’s nose and makes them more confident in their sniffing capabilities. The nose is a muscle after all, and the only way to make it stronger is by working it lots.

So rather than attempting to practise mantrailing at home, which usually backfires and is something I then have to undo again at your next session, play some sniffing games with your dog at home, outdoors, anywhere, or start another scent sport.

In my opinion, you cannot let your dog sniff enough.

It taps into their SEEKING system, one of the core emotional-motivational systems identified by neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp in humans and animals. It’s powered by dopamine, the neurotransmitter that tells the brain: “This is exciting. Keep going!”

And it plays out in two phases:

The appetitive phase – the pursuit of sniffing, scanning, searching...

And then the consummatory phase – the reward of eating, chewing…

The interesting thing is that dopamine is released during the appetitive phase, not the consummatory phase.

So it’s the seeking, not the getting, that really feels good.

This is how mantrailing itself becomes rewarding for the dogs. Yes, they love the snacks they get from the trail layer, but they LOVE the hunt even more. So why am I telling you all of this?

Let your dog SEEK :)

The latest research shows:

• Scent work increases emotional wellbeing and promotes optimistic cognitive bias (Duranton & Horowitz, 2019; 2023).

• Problem-solving helps dogs build self-confidence and cope better with novelty and stress.

• Novel environments and objects trigger healthy dopamine release and satisfy exploratory needs.