In the sport of tracking, a dog follows the scent left by a person who has earlier walked through an area. The dog is given the scent at the beginning of the track from an article that has been handled by the tracklayer. The dog must follow the track, through several turns, and locate one or more articles that have been dropped by the tracklayer. The final article is at the end of the track.
The people who train Shelties to track are few in number, but are very dedicated to the sport. Since the beginning of AKC tracking in 1936, when passing a tracking test was a requirement for a Utility Dog title, over 400 Shelties have achieved AKC tracking titles.
Shelties are not the first dog breed people think of when they think about dogs using their noses to follow a human scent. But Shelties can track, and, as their trainers and handlers have discovered, they can track very well.
My inspiration to develop this web page came when I was working on the article, Tracking the Tracking Shelties, which was published in the 2001 Handbook of the American Shetland Sheepdog Association. In the process of researching this article, I accumulated an enormous amount of material about so many tracking Shelties, and about their owners. After I finished my article, I wanted to organize my information in a way that would be readily available to anyone interested in the history of Shelties in tracking and in Search and Rescue work.
This is my set of lists of Shelties who have achieved tracking titles. I started them when I was writing the article, and several years ago I put the lists on the Internet at the request of another handler of tracking Shelties. There are almost certainly errors and omissions–which I would like to hear about. Very few of the links to individual dogs will be published, because much of that information is from copyrighted publications.
Anyone interested in Sheltie tracking history can start with any of the buttons above, and dive in. I hope there are not too broken links, other than links to individual dogs. If you find any errors or omissions, I would certainly appreciate hearing from you so that I can correct them. AMK
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