Help with track (footprint)

[Turnstone]

I just browsed through a few pictures and found this one. I am still a beginner in regards to tracking, and waiting for my books to arrive, so excuse me if this is an easy one...

It has claws, so it is not a cat. I remember that this looked strange to me so I made the picture. I should have added a ruler or something, but now that's too late. It was a quite large footprint, as you can see from the needles lying around. I guess 6 or 7 cm wide, but I can't say for sure now. It doesn't look like a dog, and of course it is not a fox. It followed the forest track for a while, but I couldn't find out if and where it left the track. There were lots of dog and human footprints around, too. Sorry, can't say anything about the gait either. Didn't know anything about that at that time...

 

[Bushwhacker]

It's a dog.

 

[Turnstone]

Thanks for your reply, Bushwhacker. Can you please give a short explanation why you believe it is a dog, so that I can learn?

 

[Bushwhacker]

Thanks for your reply, Bushwhacker. Can you please give a short explanation why you believe it is a dog, so that I can learn?

Blimey, I don't own any tracking books, so my jargon might be a bit different, but here goes:

As in most cases, it's not the perfect track - there is a slight twist to the toes (maybe turning, side-trotting or uneven ground ) but you can assume that this is fairly parallel, so that's one clue.
Also, 4 toes, size, shape, position of the pad in relation to the toes, claw marks, toes splaying outwards and the provenance you supplied - in a woods with human and dog tracks - would lead me to say it's a dog.
I hope I'm right!

 

[Turnstone]

Don't worry about the jargon. I am not familiar with that yet, AND it's a foreign language, too

So thanks for your explanations!

A dog would have been the most probable animal, that's true. But all the other dog prints looked more like this (much longer than wide), so I wasn't sure if it was another animal.

 

[Bushwhacker]

If you chop off the back of the pad in picture 2, you can see how similar it is to picture 1.

 

[Turnstone]

If you chop off the back of the pad in picture 2, you can see how similar it is to picture 1.

Now, that you point me to it, yes that's true! That might be the reason why I only found a few footprints and not a complete track.