Not in most cases, Rosana. Being able to do that would require an amazing coincidence of circumstantial evidence, i.e. the dog walked through tile clay (will pick up very fine details) and happened to be of a breed that had hairy feet, and you knew for some other reasons to be on the lookout for a dog with pelage like that – for example.

 

What dog tracks normally yield is a kind of blurry or approximate idea of the dog’s size and weight, again how “blurry” depending upon the fineness of the impression. If you’ve got a long trackway, you can get info concerning the step and stride length and what gait the dog used. If there are crisscrossing tracks you can find out whether there was more than one dog, or species other than dogs, i.e. the dog was following some other animal or a human.

 

If you like I’ll be happy to send a paper that I wrote some years ago on this subject which gives a great deal of detailed information and an outline of how to go about research on “dog ichnology”. Ask me by return Email – fairly large file so can’t attach it here. Cheers – Deb Bennett

 

 

Dear All,

 

does any of you know if it was possible to determine the dog breed by their tracks?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Rosana

 

 

 

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