WE BELIEVE WE ARE MEASURING WHAT WE ARE ONLY INTERPRETING

The illusion of objective dog assessment

An essay drawn from four decades of practice

Tanino Gaetano Chiavaro · Independent author and publicist · 2026

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I have worked with dogs for over forty years.

I have handled avalanche and rescue dogs. I was active in sled dog sport and won the Swiss Championship in the unlimited sprint class in 2004. I have trained working and sporting dogs, served as a judge at trials, and taken part in countless trials myself.

As editor and translator of the work "The Belgian Shepherd Dog: 125 Years of Illustrated History," I spent years studying the functional and historical development of working breeds.

My thesis at the Freie Journalistenschule Berlin examined the media portrayal of dogs and its influence on society's patterns of perception.

In the course of all this, one conviction took hold that no longer lets go of me: we believe we are measuring what we are only interpreting.

This essay is an attempt to think that observation through to the end. It makes no claim to be exhaustive. It is a reflection — subjective, but reasoned. And a provocation.

FOREWORD

We make decisions about working dogs as though they were objective. They are not.

This is what I have learned: the more certain we feel, the less we truly understand.

We observe a dog for ten minutes — and believe we have grasped its nature. We measure cortisol levels — and are convinced we have detected stress. We see a pedigree — and think we can predict the future.

The problem is not that we are ignorant. The problem is that we believe we are not.