If you read part 1 of the Lion Tracker’s Guide To Life you’ll remember that this book is about how to be, not what to do. Renias and Alex do not instruct Boyd on the step-by-step of tracking lions. They mentor him. They invite him to be with them as they track. They guide him rather than teach him. In the book, Boyd shares his experiences tracking and learning how to be with his true nature and flow in the aliveness of the track. You can learn how to be with your true nature and flow in the aliveness of the search – it all starts with the desire to understand yourself and your dog.
Lions, Tigers, And Odor, Oh My!
Imagine stepping to the start line of a scent work search and sensing the possibility of great danger… Probably not happening, unless you hear a nest of angry hornets buzzing in the bumper of the first car in your vehicle search.
Now, imagine stepping to the edge of your camp in the wild eastern part of South Africa and sensing the possibility of great danger… it’s not hard to imagine, with lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants, hyenas, and crocodiles out there.
The very real possibility of danger when tracking animals in the wild has a way of tuning one’s senses to read the clues in the environment that tell the past, present, and likely future movements of these animals.
No one tracks lions casually. You must desire to know how to track. You must be driven to seek, notice, and discover, accepting all that the wild has to tell you. You must submit to this truth: “the deepest lessons must be lived”. When you track, you’re living in the story of another animal. This, according to Boyd Varty, author of the Lion Tracker’s Guide To Life, is the essence of being human.
Searching for scent work hides offers you a less dangerous (still might be bumper hornets*), but equally powerful opportunity to live in the story of another animal: your odor hunting dog. You need only to wake up your wild inner self – the part of you that knows how to feel and sense, how to learn through living, and how to connect to the energy of the search.
* The bumper hornets really happened to a scent work team during a vehicle search in Colorado. The dog persisted in her search for odor despite getting stung.
Lesson: “The Highest Pursuit Of The Trail: Aliveness Itself” – Boyd Varty
There’s a moment in the book where Boyd has settled into the flow state as he takes the lead on the lion’s trail. He is fully alive in the act of tracking.
You could be fully alive in the act of meter reading or cement mixing, knitting, or data processing. It is not what you are doing, but how you are being.
I’ve seen people search with their dogs as if they were expressionless grocery store clerks swiping sundry goods across the bar code scanner and stuffing them into paper sacks. Monotone zombies who utter “ahhlurrrrt” as they shove a pittance of a treat in the dogs maw and shuffle them off the hide with a lugubrious “find mooor”.
I’ve also seen people search with their dogs in a way that is so captivating it takes your breath away. It’s an expression of two souls in profound connection.
Boyd describes Renias as he shifts into the energy of the lion’s trail they have been tracking:
“The process is somewhere between an artist’s unconventional way and an athlete’s big-match temperament. There are days when Renias just cannot get excited about a trail. But now, he goes into a zone. I can’t say why this track is calling him to life or if instead he is bringing the track to life. Is he calling to it or is it calling him?… One ventures off the edge of the map here. There is no prescribed route, yet we know this place when we see it. We can feel it in great dancers and innovators and athletes. Yogi’s have spoken about it for thousands of years. It is as if Renias can feel what wants to happen. He is so deeply in the now that it contains all time.”
PAGE 61, LION TRACKER’S GUIDE TO LIFE
Boyd does not say that Renias is a machine who tracks lions with optimal enthusiasm and efficiency every time he tracks. He says Renias has good days and bad days. Renias is not concerned with achievement, he tracks. He tracks because that is what he does. It is his process.
For Renias, the process itself can bring a reward that is beyond comparison. Boyd goes on to say:
“They {Renias and Alex} communicate seamlessly with each other. They are absolutely committed to achieving the goal before them, but that commitment hasn’t become a burden. There is a joy to the concentration. Their eyes are shining in excitement. The task itself is generating energy. You could say they are playing on the track. The goal is not a fixed thing but a living creature.”
PAGE 62, LION TRACKER’S GUIDE TO LIFE
I have witnessed scent work teams search like Renias and Alex track. A single moment in time can burst open like a field of spring wild flowers. It’s overwhelmingly beautiful. When a dog and human share a commitment in a joyful way it reveals an important truth: the odor source, the hide, is just a MacGuffin. It exists to create a trail to follow, but the true pursuit is aliveness.
Lesson: “The Path Of Not Here Is Part Of The Path Of Here” – Boyd Varty
Many years ago I put out odor at a park and got my dog out of the car to search with the intention of following her wherever she wanted to go. After a few minutes we were a couple hundred yards northeast of where I knew the hide was. Suddenly I felt like every person in the park was pointing at me and laughing like Nelson from the Simpsons. Trying to save face from my own mind-shaming, I ran Muriel back to the car and moved the hide. To my dismay, I could not conjure up a group of effusive onlookers to heap praise upon us as we sourced the hide. I’d quickly met my limit of tolerance with the boundary-less search experiment.
Three years ago I began to wonder how a typical competition search would go if the team searching had no knowledge of how big the search area was. Dog after dog used double, triple or greater the area size than would have been chosen as “the search area” in competition.
In these “over there” searches (as in, the search area is *hand wave* “over there”) the dogs were working beautifully and working efficiently. But, without their humans confidently conveying boundaries to them, the dogs needed to sort out edges of odor and set their own boundaries.
From my bird’s-eye view of these searches I could see that most dogs adapted quickly and comfortably to setting their own boundaries based on odor edges and absence of odor. The dogs told the truth about where odor collected and how far they needed to go to confirm which direction source was coming from.
I noticed that dogs who are in control of where, how, and how far to go to search for odor are much less likely to be confused by the perennial boogie-men: trapping odor, pooling odor, collecting odor, and no odor. This is because the dogs are able to walk “the path of not here” AND “the path of here”. They learn deep lessons about scent and how to search for the information needed to find source.
After 3+ years of boundary-less searching I reflect back on my inability to trust my dog at the park and I laugh! What was holding me back from letting her take “the path of not here”? I’m sure I thought that if we weren’t obviously in the neighborhood of the hide then we were wasting our time – or worse, creating “bad” habits. Those concerns are far less valid if I’d come to the park that day to search with complete unknowns.
For Boyd and his tracking mentors, “the path of not here” is not good or bad, it just is. Boyd describes how his tracking mentors react to losing the trail of a lion they’ve been tracking for hours:
“Alex and Renias change modes. Their twenty years in the bush have created a seamless cohesion. More than any other part of tracking, losing the track might be the most metaphorically rich. The tracker’s next moves are an embodied set of instructions. Like an interpretive dance. Watching them move, I decipher a code of instructions for when you lose the trail:
Accept that losing the track is part of tracking. Go back to the last clear track. There is information there. Walk up ahead checking any open terrain and bare ground. Open your focus. Any place you don’t find a track is not wasted, but part of refining where to look. Flow for a while on your best guess, alert, listening, noticing.”
PAGE 73-74, LION TRACKER’S GUIDE TO LIFE
A dog who loses the trail of odor will act in much the same way as Alex and Renias. The dog may circle back to a found hide, repeat a pattern, open his focus and become more sensitive to his environment (and his human partner), but not a moment is wasted. It is all part of refining where to look.
I’ve watched scent work teams work together to regain a lost trail of odor and it is just as Boyd describes: metaphorically rich! The dog will often freely flow on his best guesses, while the human tries hard to remain open to the many clues the dog is gathering. Given enough time, a dedicated team can find the way forward on even the most ghost-like of odor trails.
Boyd continues to describe the ethos of the tracker on a lost track:
“Trackers try things. The tracker on a lost track enters a process of rediscovery that is fluid. He relies on a process of elimination, inquiry, confirmation; a process of discovery and feedback. He enters a ritual of focused attention. As paradoxical as it sounds, going down a path and not finding a track is part of finding the track. Alex and Renias call this “the path of not here.” No action is considered a waste, and the key is to keep moving, readjusting, welcoming feedback. The path of not here is part of the path of here.”
PAGE 75, LION TRACKER’S GUIDE TO LIFE
Dogs try things. Unselfconscious humans try things. It is the way of the tracker! You can make your time with your dog so much more fulfilling if you adopt the ethos of the tracker and truly believe that no action is considered a waste. The problem-solving approach that “failed” your dog in today’s search may be the approach that avails him in the finding of the hide in tomorrow’s search.
Lesson: Welcome Self-Doubt As A Teacher Of Humility – Boyd Varty
Who among us has not felt what Boyd describes as “an old friend who has walked with me for years… called self-doubt.” Boyd experiences self-doubt when Renias and Alex give him the lead as they close in on the lions they have been tracking all day. Here’s Boyd’s advice for dealing with self-doubt:
“I have learned rather than to resist him, to invite him in, welcoming him as a teacher of humility. Together, we continue. The first track, and then the next first track.”
PAGE 117, LION TRACKER’S GUIDE TO LIFE
I’m pretty sure most of us experience self-doubt at times when we search with our dogs. It can be crippling self-doubt, like when every decision you make is the exact opposite of what you intended to do (call alert when your dog was sniffing pee; pull your dog away from a hide he indicated three times; call clear when your dog is intensely bracketing an inaccessible hide). It can be mildly inhibiting self-doubt, like when you can’t make up your mind if you should just let your dog cruise right into the search area or stop him and do your search routine.
If you’re experiencing a lot of self-doubt when you search with your dog, ask yourself if you feel confident in your team’s foundational skills. If the answer is yes, maybe you’re just experiencing an unusually high number of searches that are stretching you and your dog to your current limits of understanding. It’s ok to have some doubt when you’re growing your search partnership. To avoid burnout, try to find a way to introduce some variability into your searches challenges.
If you think your self-doubt is because you or your dog are lacking some important foundational skills, don’t be afraid to let others know. Boyd spent a lot of time learning to tune his awareness to all animals in the bush, learning to identify all of the tracks on well-traveled game paths, but he didn’t do it alone. He had guidance from Alex and Renias, and others, too.
Take all of the time you need to develop your and your dog’s foundational skills. Find mentors to guide you. Develop techniques to remind yourself how you want to be when you search with your dog (there are many ways to use music, meditation, repetitive phrases and such to cultivate the right mindset). Find your process and practice it.
Lesson: “We Are Each The Fingers Of A Single Hand. Each Connected To The Same Task” – Boyd Varty
Boyd is describing Renias, Alex and himself flowing as one on the trail of the lions. If you’ve ever flowed as one with your searching dog, you know it does not just mean following your dog and calling out alert. Boyd’s use of metaphor – describing three people as three fingers on a hand – is clear, each finger can move independently as it works in concert with the others.
When you search with your dog you are not relinquishing your independence. You are there to receive what your dog communicates, acting intuitively when you feel or sense the need for conversation or collaboration. Consider what you do as “wondering” (not wandering). You’re flowing in the communication from your dog, like a stick in a stream. You’ll feel the speed of the current, the swirls of an eddy, the stillness of running aground on a large boulder. Let your dog provide you with a stream of communication.
If you believe your dog should find hides independently, just put him on a bus to the trial and pick him up with his ribbons at the end of the day!
Sure, there are some searches where all your dog needs is for you to keep up with him and produce the treats as he confidently sources every hide.
There are also searches where your dog needs your feedback, your agreement, your understanding.
Using the finger metaphor – if you go to grip something and only one of your fingers assists in the task you’ll drop this something on your foot. There are some searches that will feel like a hammer being dropped on your foot if you do nothing to share in the completion of the task with your dog.
It is no coincidence that Boyd tells the story of three trackers working together to follow a lion’s trail – a trail that could not be followed by any one of them alone. Prepare yourself for those searches that call you into deep resonance with your dog, joining you together on the trail of odor.
Lesson: “Find Friends To Track With…” – Boyd Varty
If you ask me what brings me the most joy as a scent work coach it’s working with two humans (three if you count me) and a dog, sharing the roles of hide setter, leash handler, and birds-eye observer. Not only is it advantageous from a neurological perspective to shift roles, it is deeply rewarding. For the dog, her tribe grows from just one human to three. This appears to be meaningful and rewarding as well.
I am interested in providing an environment where aliveness can flourish. This means allowing for the unexpected, for the “unwanted” and experiencing frustration at times. When I experience aliveness or witness it in others, it has an energy and a joy that comes through trust and acceptance. It is that alert call you make on your own vehicle’s rear wheel just after you’ve let your dog out of the crate in the back. It is that lengthy time spent in collecting odor, followed by a cascade of hides found. It is that trail followed and lost, followed and lost, that joins you and your dog – the final two pieces – into the puzzle of the search, completing the odor picture.
In the epilogue to The Lion Tracker’s Guide To Life Boyd has these closing words for all of us who feel drawn to live our purpose – or to search with a deeper connection to our dogs:
“Remember to prepare for the call. Know the call when it comes by the fact that not doing it would feel profoundly wrong. Open yourself to the unknown. Develop your track awareness. Amidst all of the information that surrounds us, learn to see what is deeply important to you. Use the feelings in your body as a guide. Live on first tracks. Anything that puts you into your essence, no matter how small, is valuable. Even if you don’t know where it’s going, play with it. Find friends to track with, lose the track, keep trying things, get feedback. Find your flow and remember to see how many unexpected things come into your life by living this way. It will be scary at times. Let the fear bring you to life. I suspect that if you give yourself the room to live each day as a tracker, a deep calling to serve will emerge. So my friend, as you read this, let this be a call to you. It’s time. Go track.”
PAGE 134-135, LION TRACKER’S GUIDE TO LIFE
It’s time. Go search.
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