Intentional Handling and Hide Setting Workshop Hot Wash with Bob Deeds

What to listen for:

“You can still support your dog, but you do not have to step in and solve [the problem].”

Our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, sit down with returning guest Bob Deeds to unpack a week of Intentional Handling and Hide Setting, the detection camp the two hosts built years ago and this year expanded to fifteen students running six searches a day!

Held on Robin's working farm, the course throws teams (Papillons alongside Malinois, cadaver handlers alongside sport dog people) into barns full of donkey dung, hay fields, and wind that Bob, fresh from Texas, learns shifts hourly in Iowa.

Hides "misbehave": they migrate, vanish with the moving sun, or disappear when a tractor pulls away from a scent pool.

Rather than solving the problem for their dogs, handlers are coached to read arousal. The dog owns exactly one job, the trained behavior; the handler owns everything else.

By week's end, students are setting their own hides, and handling that once looked frantic becomes nearly invisible. That’s proof, Bob argues, that intentional handling builds teamwork rather than dependence.

Homework matters as much as class time, too. Students now film their runs and coaching, and by day four they're self-correcting before anyone says a word. There’s been so much success this year that Robin, Stacy, and Bob are already looking toward next year's version of the course!

 

Key Topics:

• A Bigger, Reimagined Intentional Handling and Hide Setting Week (01:39)
• Building Systematic Toughness (04:56)
• When Hides Misbehave: Wind, Sun, and a Living Working Farm (10:50)
• Trainer Ethics and Why Students Should Design Their Own Hides (18:49)
• The Bowling Alley Analogy and a Live Lesson in Canine Stress Signals (25:23)
• The Wagon Wheel, Heads-Up Display, and Handler Challenges (30:50)
• The Donut of Effectiveness and Cyclical "Spinning Plates" Training (40:34)
• Key Takeaways (44:02)

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