Don't be a dummy

Nick Ridley on the perils of taking marketing blurb at face value

- Nick Ridley

Am I alone in noticing a dramatic increase in the volume of gundog training gear hitting the market? My social media feeds are full of the ‘latest and greatest’ bit of kit that will change my gundog training for the better. Most of it is a rehash of what is already on the market and has just been jazzed up to tempt us. Very rarely does something new and innovative come along.

Thousands of gundogs, including field trial champions, have been trained with nothing more than a few green dummies and a handful of tennis balls. Don’t misunderstand me – there have been some really useful products coming to market, ones that have genuinely helped and improved gundog training, but they are in the minority.

Questions

Earlier in my career, part of my job in animal welfare was to interview people who might have broken the law. My training taught me to ask what are known as ‘open’ questions.

An open question is one that invites an answer, not just a yes or no. I believe this is the approach we should employ when looking into the kit we buy to train our dogs. My lines of inquiry are informed by the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why.