The age old question regarding IPO tracking..."when do I add articles to my track?"  For every question in dog training there are about 500 answers, and every trainer will have a different idea. But for me it is very simple. I personally do not add articles to tracking until I have removed a lot of food from the track. Honestly in my system my dogs learn to down first at the end of a track at a pile of food. So normally when my dog can do a IPO 1 track with hardly any food until the end I do not add articles. But I do teach the article indication off the track. When the articles are 100% proofed off the track and the dog can do a IPO 1 track or something similar without much food (except for the pile of food at the end) then and only then will I add the articles on the track. Think about it this way, in the beginning the motivation for the dog is to get the food from footsteps. If you try to put articles on the track when the dog is still being motivated to get food from foot steps you will run into problems. Having articles on the track while there is still a lot of food will not only disrupt the tracking, your dog will not want to indicate the articles because it is busy tracking. Its a two part situation. And in dog training it is never advantageous to try to train two things at the same time. Once food is removed from the track the motivation to indicate articles will increase dramatically. It only makes sense.