EP20: Decoy Dogging With Joey Hartley

Um, let's, uh, kinda tell all the listeners, kind of, uh...

Let's kinda dive into Rip a little bit.

Um, how long have you had him? What kind of dog is he? And was it always your plan to use Rip as a, as a decoy dog?

Yeah.

So Rip turned five in April.

Um, he's half Idaho Shag, quarter Jagdterrier, quarter Doberman Pinscher, who's basically bred intentionally, um, to decoy.

And, um, you know, our whole point of getting him was to decoy.

Um, got him from Seth Simpson here in Idaho.

I think he's putting out the best dogs consistently for decoy work or just all around any type of fur work.

I mean, his dogs are unmatched

unmatchedYeah, that's-

Nice

... that's, uh, you know, the, the decoy dogging stuff is...

I see it all the time, and I feel like I'm seeing it more and more, and it's just so cool to see everything kind of unfold.

Um, so how...

What's, like, the training process to, to getting a dog to, to, to be a decoy dog?

Yeah.

Um, I mean, if you have to train them a whole lot, chances are they're not the ideal dog.

Um, so you can't train a dog to want to engage a coyote.

You can't train that drive into them.

So really what you're focusing on, you're wanting to work with a dog that's got the genetics for that, and then you just fine-tune it, you know.

Um, and we did some gun work, just to make sure it's not gun shy.

Um, big thing is recall the tone.

You know, that's how we communicate with them basically in the field.

And, um, if you can teach a dog to come back to you with your voice, you just overlap the tone with that, and eventually take your voice away, and they have the tone, and they know to come back.