Scent tracking

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DDog is male 10 month old dog who is not yet neutered. This isn't a new behaviour. When out walking he will often start circling and sniffing a scent. He will then go charging off pulling and straining at the lead with his nose to the ground sniffing the lead. On certain walks (usually bed time) he will also pull like crazy and be whining to get at something up ahead. I can never see anything that would be of interest to him (like a cat).
Is it possible these scents he are going mad over are female dogs in season. I have read they can smell them up to three miles away. Or is it just as likely to be a cat which has gone past earlier? He is obsessed with cats and whines and pulls to get at them when he sees them. He lives with a cat who he loves and there were lots of cats on the farm where he was bred so he doesn't want to attack them but say hello I think (although I appreciate his prey drive could kick in). I suppose I'm wondering if this behaviour might improve when he is neutered or not. I am trying to train him not to pull etc and use watch me to get his focus back on me but once he has once of these scents they are much more interesting than any food or me. Even if he does check back in and gets a treat he goes straight back to pulling and trying to get to whatever he is tracking again.

Breed? I have gundogs from working lines and both of them will get onto a good scent (rabbit, hare, pheasant, woodcock, any sort of deer...)

They have to be taught to focus on whatever we were doing together (heelwork etc) rather than hooning off after the scent, unless I told them that they could.

He's a cavapoo so I guess the spaniel in him. This is just on the local pavements around us so generally human, cats and dogs although I guess the odd squirrel and bird.
I will keep working on the heel work but he is much more interested in the scents! Doesn't help that high value treats give him diarrhoea so mainly using kibble. That just seems to act as refuelling!

I started reading and my instant thought was this must be some sort of spaniel dog.
My cocker who is around 17 months will do this once he's on to a scent,
Does yours get any off lead time?

Sounds like entirely normal dog behaviour to me! I'd be worried if he didn't want to sniff, since sniffing is life for most dogs and in my view they should be allowed to sniff as much as they want, provided it's well-mannered when onlead. We do sniffy, slow onlead evening walks when our spaniel has had a very active training walk or long offlead walk in the morning as it chills her out and she comes home very fulfilled.

Unfortunately not very much as he just runs off and doesn't come back when called until he has got running around like a crazy thing out of his system (and eaten some poo). Hopefully this will improve as he gets older but had no luck using secure fields to train recall in as they are pretty boring to him so he just hangs around the food.

I let him do a lot of sniffing but this is the crazy, not well mannered sniffing I am talking about where he is nose down, pulling hard, straining at the leash and whining to get to where ever he wants to go. I just wondered if it could be to do with dogs in heat but it sounds like it probably isn't and we just need to do more training.

It could be a dog in season but it's much more likely to be some other sort of interesting scent.

Both mine can lose their heads a bit if they get a scent and they're both girls so I wouldn't count on it being anything to do with dogs in heat or hold on to any hope of it improving with neutering.

Completely normal dog behaviour, especially for a spaniel mix. It could be anything he's interested in (cat, squirrel etc) not necessarily a bitch in season. I do scent work with my dog (a bit like what drug sniffer dogs do) and take my dog mantrailing - basically finding a hidden person by tracking their scent. When you start doing something like that it really brings to life how amazing their sense of smell is - he'll use his nose the way you use your eyes to see.

To put it into context - your dog could smell a teaspoonful of sugar dropped into a full size swimming pool. Imagine what the world would be like if we could smell like that!

I don't think neutering would make any difference, it's really more behavioural.

The book Total Recall has some really good suggestions for how to build up a solid recall which would allow you to give your dog more off lead time and get all those sniffs out of his system. You can then concentrate on nice lead walking knowing he's still got a good outlet for all that sniffing :-)

Have you tried working on recall using a longline? You can play sniff it out games on a longline eg tennis balls in deep grass and then get him to bring them to you.

If he associates you with fun games, it will be easier to crack recall.

Sounds totally normal for me, especially for a breed like a spaniel (or spaniel mix, in your case). My beagle still behaves like this when he gets a scent and he'll be seven in February. It's definitely much worse when it's windy.

Find your nearest tracking or scentwork instructor and harness the skill.

Encouraging dogs to sniff and track will help them with their natural desire and lead to a calmer more contented dog.

Sounds like normal dog behaviour but it would be good to build on it and make it more manageable and a tracking,mantrailing or scentwork course would do that

Do you do any actual scent work with him? My spaniel is a similar age and absolutely loves tracking work. I feel a bit of a nelly solemnly trampling out tracks for her, but she can now do three sides of a 30 metre square in a field to find the 'hidden' object at the end. So far I haven't dared follow the trainer's advice of 'If you're really confident, leave your car keys there!'

Hi OP - jumping on to say this sounds pretty normal in my experience too! My spaniel/lab cross is a horror on the lead if he's smelled something, e.g. a cat, and if it's first thing in the morning I just hang on for dear life. He's getting better at stuff like heelwork when he's calmer, but he's eight months old, and when they're this sort of age they don't have a lot of impulse control. The more time off lead I can give him, the more sane he is afterwards, though he's still fairly barking as it were.

I started with a 5m long line, dropped the end and ran away from him to get him to chase me, then added a cue, a hand signal, then a whistle. He's a bit dodgier with recall now he's a teenager, but you only need enough to let him run round a bit and sniff to his heart's content. Perhaps a 10m long line would give him a bit more sniffing without losing him completely?

Also, even if it's just a boring secure field you can throw treats in the grass and get him to hunt them out. I'm sure you've tried different types of treats, but just in case, Pooch and Mutt do lots that have probiotics which are good for their systems and which don't have things like chicken or beef or lactose, and I chop them up even smaller; or you can get things like rabbit or goat paté from places like Paws Trading and Anco, which dogs shouldn't be allergic to, and again, chop them up into teeny bits.

@GuppytheCat that scentwork sounds amazing. Is there anywhere you could point me to learn more? I know my hooligan would love that.

Well, we're learning with a very local trainer, but there's probably a course near you that would do something similar. We started by just trampling a square of grass and scattering treats on it to give the dog the idea, then a rectangle, then lengthened it into a long straight line with treats at intervals, etc etc, until the dogs were happily just sniffing their way to the endpoint without treats on the way.

It's good fun!

Get your dog signed up to a mantrailing class ASAP🤣
Joking apart you will learn to read him better, handle a long line and work as a partnership which will help immensely on normal walks as well

I have a (spayed female) scent hound breed and what you've described is pretty much our norm. For a lot of hunting and field dogs, this is the breed instinct. My dog has been know to track the smells of family members and our close friends around our village before!

I second trying him on a long lead, retractable if need be and training in scent work. At 10 months my spaniels recall wasn't good. He's 3 now and so good but I worked hard with training. Having said that I'm aware that there could always be a time where he picked up an irresistible scent and would take off.

We did do some man trailing and he was apparently very good at it. I think the main problem is the weather and the short days. I can only use a long line if we go to the park and I can only do that at the weekend. In the week walks are from the house and a long line wouldn’t be suitable. I have wondered about a retractable lead but so many people seem to be against them.