Wherever we go, we leave traces; ghosts of ourselves moving around in the air, blowing up against the sides of walls, gusting down rivers. We aren’t aware of these ghosts, but dogs are. With their specialised noses, 100,000 times more powerful than ours, they can distinguish between hundreds of smells to identify the unique scent of a human. Mantrailing is when a dog works to find a missing person, either in an emergency situation, or for fun.

Dog mantrailing on a forest floor — Layla. Photo by Chris Lawrence

In a mantrailing session each handler takes turns to trail with their own dog and to hide for another. The dog smells an item of clothing and then tracks the person to their hiding place, getting a reward - usually food. The trails get harder and longer as the dog progresses: initially the person will excite the dog, showing them food and calling their name before leaving. In the most advanced trails, neither the dog nor the handler will have seen the person beforehand, and the handler doesn’t know where they are either.

Mantrailing at night — Layla trailing at a train station at night. Photo by Chris Lawrence

All my dogs love this game, but the one I trail with most often is Layla. She’s thoughtful and methodical and rarely put off by distractions, and if she is - like the three offroad motorbikes who sped past us on our last trail - she will just take a moment before shaking it off and continuing. I love being out with her, reading her responses. Sometimes, at a junction for instance, the scent can billow and become confusing, and she’ll stop, unsure. Sometimes she’ll work it out; other times I’ll have to help her by returning to the last place she was sure. When she has a clear scent her pace increases and her head comes up, moving from side to side to catch the waves of it in the air. If there are buildings she’ll trail close to them, as the scent has blown and gathered on the walls. Once, she left the path to follow the river: the missing person was standing on a bridge and her scent was flurrying downstream.

dog mantrailing in a forest — Photo by Chris Lawrence

The dogs trail one at a time so it’s a wonderful sport for dog reactive dogs, which Layla can be. But if we come across a dog on the trail she’ll ignore it, too focussed on the job to be bothered, and I’ve seen a noise-phobic dog trail in a thunderstorm. It builds confidence: she is in charge here; she knows what to do. All I can do is read her body language, assist when she needs it, and follow where she leads. I think what I love about it most is that I am never more aware that my dogs exist in a parallel universe to mine: they live beside me but experience the world in a completely different way, a way I can’t even imagine.

Layla mantrailing over a bridge — Photo by Anna Pleban of Follow Dogs

I love being the missing person too: lying in a bed of bracken watching the sky through the fronds, or leaning against a tree watching a family of busy tits, or sitting on a bed of soft moss listening to the sounds: to a blackbird, to a stream, waiting for the sound of a dog’s soft breath as she finds my hiding place, following the ghost of me from the scent of a sock I left behind.

The subject has been found — Found! Photo by Chris Lawrence

With thanks to Rhiannon Bevan and Chris Lawrence of Mantrailing UK - Rhondda Cynon Taff, Lisa Gorenflo of Mantrailing UK, and Anna Pleban of Follow Dogs, who have taught me so much.
To find out more, visit www.mantrailinguk.com.

Ghosts