Tracker dogs?

Yes.

No, but that would make it much easier. It could depend a lot on the terrain. High grass brushing against the child's legs?

Yes, if the woman also touched the teddy which is both very likely and probable.

aruna said:

A group of people, women and kids, are trying to escape someone with a tracker dog. They cross a field with lots of different smells, the dog is confused and doesn't know which scent is theirs, which one to follow.

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I have to say, unless the dog is inexperienced, this is highly unlikely. S&R people spend a lot of time making sure the dogs know that searching for a particular human means following that scent and no other. No dog would confuse deer scent for human scent, for example, and trained dogs don't confuse one human with another, although some scents are so strong they can overwhelm the human scent. (I've heard that burglers and other types of people who have experience escaping from dogs keep vials of extremely strong, sharp-smelling oils, like mustard oil, to throw across their trail.) IMO, though, if, for some reason, the dog should get confused in the field, the handler would simply circle the dog out from the last positive scent marker until the dog picked up the scent again. A group of people is going to leave a big scent trail.

One of the women is holding a small child, the child drops its teddy. Could the dog pick up the scent from that, would the child have to be walking, or could the dog smel the mother as well and follow that?

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You don't have to touch anything to leave scent a dog can pick up. Your scent hangs in the air when you move around, though of course that's more transient and vulnerable to being blown around. But a bloodhound can smell the equivalent of a pinch of mustard powder in the Grand Canyon. The dogs don't need much to get a scent, and trackable scent can hang around a long time. One S&R group I know wiped a piece of cotton over a steering wheel the person they were searching for had touched twelve hours earlier, and gave that to the dogs as a scent indicator. Also, different breeds of dogs track differently. Some (like German shepherds) track primarily by air scent, and some (like bloodhounds) by ground scent, although any dog will use both when they can't track using just one.

Your best bet may be to have weather conditions unfavorable to tracking--high winds and torrential downpours, both of which would tend to wipe out scent trails.

aruna said:

Thanks, both of you.
Aconite, I should explain a bit more. These ARE fairly inexerienced tracker dogs - certaibly not professionals.
And, most importantly, they don't know the people they are supposed to track, never smelt them before, so in that field (which has been used by several people) they would not know which of the scents is the one they are supposed to follow. Does that make more sense?

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The inexperienced part might give you some license, but they couldn't track people if they weren't given a scent to follow. It would just be a goose chase. They have to first give the dogs an identifiying scent to track. Most dogs that track don't know the people they are tracking, they do it from a scent they are commanded to follow. It can be from the trail, like you are saying, but I would think they would pick up the strongest scent since it would possibly be the most recent. Then if they find the teddy bear, they would certainly have the right scent to follow.
I think like Aconite said, you can have the conditions deteriorate to help them escape or I initially thought they could cross a body of water, like walking upstream, etc. To me that would be more believable.

D.J. said:

They have to first give the dogs an identifiying scent to track.

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This is correct. You can't just tell a dog to track without indicating what he's supposed to track. It would be like telling a human to do, without indicating what he's supposed to do.

Most dogs that track don't know the people they are tracking, they do it from a scent they are commanded to follow.

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Yup. Exactly right.

It can be from the trail, like you are saying, but I would think they would pick up the strongest scent since it would possibly be the most recent.

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Again, correct. If the field was often used by people, but the last group of people to go through it was the escaping group, that scent would be freshest and would dominate all other scents.

I initially thought they could cross a body of water, like walking upstream, etc. To me that would be more believable.

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That doesn't help as much as people think it does. It can help somewhat, because of the way air moves over water, but it doesn't erase the air trail. They'd need to have a good lead on the dog for that to make a significant difference. And if they brushed against anything--overhanging branches, exposed parts of water plants, exposed stones--there's your ground trail again. And, of course, when they come out of the water, their scent will be all over the bank, so they'd have to go a long way in the water to lose the dog.

I would think you would want to walk downstream, not up. Walking upstream, the water might carry your scent down to the trackers, whereas walking downstream it would just carry it further away.

I think it would make sense of the owner recognised the bear and directed the dogs to scent from the bear--otherwise it is just another smelly object in the field.