Ascension Canine Training

03/12/2025

Arousal levels 😤

The ‘inverted U of arousal’, also known as 'Yerkes-Dodson Law' establishes that dogs work best when in a state of moderate arousal.

When a dog is in low arousal, it will typically work poorly, unreliably, or not at all.

In high arousal, the dog will often have difficulty focusing, become stressed, over-excited, and be unable to utilise its senses to maximum effect.

How this law impacts tracking training and development is very important, particularly for dogs whose role is apprehend offenders at the conclusion of a track.

Take a dog who has been trained using sedate, article or crushed grass methods. They can absolutely track, but if you look at what they have been taught and how it was developed, training is never in high arousal, let alone even close to over-arousal.

When a dog such as this makes an apprehension in the real world, the dog suddenly learns that it can attain something which is significantly more arousing than food or a toy at the end of a track. Its expectation changes, and therefore so does its arousal levels.

This means, like it or not, many dogs will now be approaching they subsequent tracks in a state of over-arousal for which they have zero preparation to handle as their entire experience prior was low to medium arousal when tracking.

On the other hand, using the GAK9 system and fire trails, we can have a dog learn through self-discovery to self-regulate its arousal levels to a point where they can effectively use their senses.

Once a dog knows how to regulate its own arousal, and especially with plenty of repetitions in young age, it is well prepared to handle changed expectations at the conclusion of a track.

📷 O&J Wikner Photography

01/12/2025

Tracking assessment standards📑

There are some ideas and concepts around tracking standards which are interesting and worth considering.

Some agencies assess dogs with articles on the track, simulating the need to locate evidence. However, the main task the dogs have is to find offenders, with items which may be used as evidence only a secondary goal.

There are arguments that can be made both ways that assessing the finding of articles on a track is a good or bad idea.

I am of the opinion that assessments should focus on the dog’s ability to locate a subject, even if they cut the track and utilise the direct odour pool to find them (who wants thier dog's nose down to track into a J Hook turn into an ambush? No one tracking an armed offender should...). After a subject is located, a dog could easily then do an off-leash article search walking back in the direction the team tracked.

Conflating the two tasks only pushes teams to train off odour pools to avoid the dog missing articles and failing a poorly designed assessment.

Many agencies conduct single blind testing where the assessor knows where the track is. If this was a verifiably suitable testing modality, many empirical studies in science would use single blind testing (hint: they don’t).

Reality tells us that single blind testing can never be relied on to indicate true capability. It can hint, but dogs assessed this way should not be touted as meeting operational readiness requirements for an agency.

I know of many dogs who can apparently track someone who has fled in a car, but not under double blind conditions. But somehow under single blind they get found.

Distances and other criteria should match the operational needs of a team.

If you expect to be delayed up to several hours prior to conducting a track, assessments should align to that. If typical tracks are between 1-5km, assessments should also replicate that.

26/11/2025

2026 is rapidly approaching 😮

I am starting to plan out the year ahead and assessing locations and dates for conducting GAK9 tracking workshops. Due to family circumstances (adding some more members to the pack), 2026 will be mostly local to the Canberra region.

2025 was absolutely massive with multiple government courses, overseas trips, and plenty of interstate travel. 2026 will not look anywhere near as busy as I go through a bit of lull to spend more time with my family.

Most workshops will be based in Canberra, so if you’re keen - be prepared to travel. I will venture out of my home location to conduct a single workshop in Queensland and also in New Zealand.

Any government clients interested in engaging my services will need to get in early before I fill up my calendar and have no wriggle room to support requests for courses.

I will release my schedule in the near future and will give plenty of warning before doing so.

24/11/2025

Like many areas in the dog industry, there are wildly varying opinions regarding tracking.

Many people associate the dog's nose sniffing the ground intently as the dog efficiently working a track. This is typically associated with development methods like scent pads with crushed grass, small articles, and similar. The concept is the dog learns to work the ground disturbance left by a subject, or is reinforced for working odour closest to where a subject has walked using articles as a method of reinforcement.

These methods in my view miss critical foundation lessons for a tracking dog.

None of these methods adequately prepare a dog for solving an odour pool problem at the end of a track. They do not deal with the dog getting over-aroused once they have had an apprehension at the conclusion of a track. They also miss out of the dog learning for itself how to solve problems as they are almost always trained on leash.

There are many more fundamental issues I see with dogs trained in these methods which typically place more weight on appearance than ability.

What I do see though are dogs who learn via these methods who subsequently work real world tracks and learn through self-discovery to solve many of these issues.

But the cost is often failed tracks.

There are videos from offender perspectives of police dogs getting within feet of them, but moving the dog moves away as they lack sufficient skill to solve the odour pool problem, and the handler gets confused as they fail to identify the change of behaviour and work with the dog to solve the problem.

These issues are not universal, and there are many fantastic tracking teams working today on the road that have developed their dogs using different methods.

But these techniques are worth understanding on a deeper level when discussing tracking training and problem solving.

I used to train article search tracking for years. And then I realised how many gaps it leaves in my foundation that I moved onto the GAK9 methodology. I have not looked back since doing so.

📷 O&J Wikner Photography

22/11/2025

Hans

I'll forever be proud of my boy. Flying a dog to South Africa to help protect rhinos is an accomplishment few in Australia can claim - I'm certainly not alone in this but the list is very short.

Hans is absolutely one of the best dogs I ever raised. Possessing endless drive and tonnes of personality he was almost going to be my next forever dog.

He was too good for my backyard however, hence his journey to Africa. I'm stoked with where he ended up, and in hindsight everything I did with him taught me so much, all of which stands me in good stead to this day.

21/11/2025

Even Great Danes can track 😮

Mabel achieved a GAK9 double blind certification (Field Handler) earlier this year and is a great example of her breed. She is calm, methodical, and gives easy to ready body language indicators when tracking that make reading her a dream.

📷 O&J Wikner Photography

20/11/2025

Working on the proximity alert in the US at ATK9

19/11/2025

How it started versus how it's going ⌛

I met Liska when she was a wee little pup in New Zealand on my first workshop in the country. She got five days of tracking training with me and did really well (as did all the puppies (Gr**go and Code).

Liska saw the light (like many kiwis do these days) and moved to a better country - she now lives in Queensland with her human, Alice. They're a great team and now have several GAK9 double blind tracking certifications under their belt.

📷 &J Wikner Photography

17/11/2025

How do your dogs show love?

📷 O&J Wikner Photography

16/11/2025

I am incredibly proud to see Ezra King become the first GAK9 Sport Trailing Trainer in New Zealand!

His accomplishments are already impressive having participated in anti-poaching operations in South Africa, achieved multiple GAK9 certifications, and he also assisted me at ATK9 this year, one of the premier working dog conferences held anywhere in the world.

He has a wealth of experience to share, so for my Kiwis following, don't hesitate to reach out to him :)

EZRA KING SPORT TRAILER TRAINER NEW ZEALAND For most of my life I have held a strong interest in working dogs. Finally, after many years of admiring from a distance, I took on my own Belgian Malinois in 2021 – Buddy. We have been on a journey together attending Irondog Seminars, trialling in PSA, ...

15/11/2025

Now taking expressions of interest to conduct a GAK9 Trailing Trainer Course in 2026.

This course is conducted over a two week period, and is a mix of presentations, hands on tracking, and video reviews. This means regardless of your learning style the information will be easily assimilated.

The course will be conducted in Canberra, ACT. It will be run mid year to take advantage of the cool weather.

There is no other course like this in Australia. The level of detail we will delve into is unmatched. Government agencies seek this training out, and several engaged me for their own units this year.

This is your opportunity to gain the best tracking knowledge available in Australia.

DM to register your interest.

14/11/2025

Kisses 😘

📷 O&J Wikner Photography