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If you have hunting dogs,
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they're supposed to track down a fox by their sense of smell.
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So, one pace you can put your dogs through
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is to try to confuse them.
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They would take a red herring,
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which is a very smelly kind of fish,
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and they would drag it around over the trail of the fox;
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it's very difficult for dogs
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to still smell the fox over that smell.
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The word red herring became known as a euphemism
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for something trying to distract and confuse and
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so it was a joke.