All dogs have the ability to track and trail scent. Tracking is following scent on the ground, trailing is following scent in the air. Some dogs are better than others. Scent hounds have been bred for deep, cold noses, meaning they excel at tracking faint, old scents. Their big ears help funnel scents to their noses. Other dogs have shallower, hotter noses.
Norwegian Elkhounds are not scent hounds or even in the hound group. They are in the spitz group. They have been bred for herding and for hunting large, dangerous game. They hunt by scent tracking and hold the game at bay while the hunters approach. A Norwegian Elkhound should be a natural at scent tracking, and it is very likely that see your dog doing this all the time on walks, without realizing that's what he's doing. Setting it up as a job for the dog can be very satisfying for the dog.
The trick is to get the dog to track the scents you want him to track. Like anything else, you train this by making it more rewarding for the dog to follow the scents you want him to follow than to engage in other behaviors.
Beginner training can be started using scent patches to lay an easy track in a low-distraction area, short interval between patches, with a high-value food reward on each patch. Wait a short time, and bring the dog to the start of the hot trail. Some trainers use flags to mark the trail, avoid this because it can teach the dog to follow the flags rather than the scent trail. You also want to make sure you avoid training the dog to follow your track rather than the target scent. When the dog gets off-track, bring him back to the track and encourage him to get "back to work." When the dog is working short hot tracks reliably, gradually generalize to other scent pictures, increasing difficulty, work colder tracks, fainter trackss, work other low-distraction areas, gradually increase distraction levels, and fade the built-in food rewards in favor of handler-delivered rewards. Be patient, go slowly, only work one parameter at a time, and reward richly.
When the difficulty or distraction are too much, your dog gets bored or frustrated, always end the session on a successful note. Get your dog into a sit-stay, walk short distance from him along the original track you laid, drop a scent patch (make sure he doesn't see this), and encourage him to give it one more try. When he finds the "gimme", big reward, big praise, and let him know the work is over and he can relax.
Since it's an innate and self-rewarding behavior, it should be pretty easy to train the actual scent tracking part. Actual real-world tracking is a lot more than that though. Off-leash control is always more challenging, and since Norwegian Elkhounds are bred to work independently at great distance you can expect this to be one of the more challenging aspects.
Leerburg has absolutely horrible info on dog training, I wouldn't recommend following any of their advice or buying any of their products.
