Most readers will never have watched the decoy. What is the job?
I am the pressure. I decide when it arrives, how much of it there is, and when it goes away. Everything the dog learns about composure, it learns against me.
That means the work is not about being brave. It is about being consistent and readable, so the dog can predict me.
How much of it is physical?
Less than people assume, and it is getting less. Good technique absorbs most of what an inexperienced decoy tries to take on the arm.
The physical part is real but it is the smaller half. The harder half is the reading.
If I do my job well, you cannot see what I am doing. That is the point of it.
What are you reading?
Whether the dog is thinking or reacting. A dog that is thinking will make a decision you can see: a pause, a change of pace, a look back at the handler.
A dog that is reacting is just running a programme. If I am being honest, when I see a handler mistake, it is usually that they missed the moment the dog stopped thinking.
What does bad handling look like from where you stand?
It looks like a handler talking through the dog’s best work. Or correcting a dog that has already corrected itself.
The dogs I worry about are not the ones that get over-excited. They are the ones that have learned to stop offering anything, because offering things has been punished unpredictably.
What do you want handlers to take away?
That we are all teaching the same lesson from different sides of the field. If the handler and I are not coordinated, the dog is the one being tested on something nobody planned.
