WE BELIEVE WE ARE MEASURING WHAT WE ARE ONLY INTERPRETING
The illusion of objective dog assessment. An essay from four decades of practice.
A young working dog stands on the field. The helper steps out, the stimulus comes suddenly, just as the trial prescribes. The dog hesitates for a moment. Then it collects itself, keeps working and finishes the exercise.
The result: failed. Reason: insecurity.
A few weeks later the same dog is working on a real deployment. Noise, time pressure, nothing is predictable. The dog stays steady and does its job.
I have seen this sequence more than once in forty years. I have known dogs that looked insecure in a trial and were unshakeable on an avalanche search. And dogs that showed every exercise cleanly and fell apart on their first real call-out.
Between the trial and the deployment, nothing has to have changed in the dog’s disposition. What had changed was the situation and the way its behaviour was read.
Out of this came a sentence that has not let go of me since: We believe we are measuring what we are only interpreting.
This essay follows that sentence to its end. I will show you the point at which an observation turns into a judgement, what research knows and does not know about temperament tests, and what follows for breeding, for buying a dog and for the authorities. Where I have evidence, I name the source. Where I draw my own conclusion, I say so.
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