Meet EmmyLou, our Bavarian Mountain Hound (Pictured at age 4 months). Emmy was named after the George Strait Song “Check Yes or No.”

Emmy will only be 6 months of age when the 2022 hunting season begins in Illinois, but trust me, her nose is better than yours and mine.

Emmy has had the opportunity to go on a couple of tracking jobs for clients in this early season. Her nose has been put to work and she doesn’t hesitate to dive right in with no fear! She has came a long way with her training and we look forward to the work we will be putting in together as a team. 

If you are in need of a tracker, you can find EmmyLou’s services, as well as many other trackers in your geographical region by visiting United Blood Trackers.

If a dog can’t find it, we the hunters won’t find it either. This is usually because the hunter made a bad shot and the animal is not dead often times pushed further by tracking too early.

Dogs smell in layers. All of these layers are clues while tracking. In other words, they have the ability to separate each and every individual smell in their environment.

Who doesn’t enjoy walking into their kitchen and smelling a big ole pot of chili? We smell “chili.” Dogs smell the meat, chili powder, onions, peppers, garlic, beans (if you use them), and so forth all individually.

Dogs detect odors using olfactory receptor cells, which is the cellular structure found in the moist lining of their nasal cavity. A dogs nose contains more than 200 million of these cells with 100-200 cilia per cell. Compared to humans, we contain 5 million olfactory cells with 6-8 cilia per cell.

In other words, tracking comes quite natural and easy to them. We as handlers just have to introduce them to the smells they will encounter. Deer have interdigital scent glands in between their hooves and will also put off a different scent when wounded compared to a non wounded animal. These are all parts of the puzzle and problem solving for our K9 companions.