On September 19th Susan, Mike, Jim and Sherri along with canines Gryphon, Lektor, Belle and Rosie participated in the DuPage County Forest Preserve Ruff n’ It day. The event was held in the Greene Valley Forest Preserve. The team demonstrated techniques and obedience used on searches and answered questions from the crowd. This is the fourth …
Tic Toc the Canine Swallowed the Clock
My alarm clock drools and has bad breath. I’m not sure how they do it but my dogs always know when it is 10 minutes before the alarm is to go off. The first sign of this is what sounds like a vacuum against my ear followed by a warm blast of salmon scented …
How Wide is Too Wide?
The wider the sweep the more likely you will miss the subject, the narrower the sweep, the longer it will take to cover the assignment.
Running With Your Canine
Where we have common ground is we both run with our dogs. It started out as a safety issue. We ran before work on lonely trails that made us potential victims. Someone bent on violence is less likely to select a runner with a German Shepherd as a target than a woman alone.
Why BH?
The begleitenhund or BH is first and foremost a temperament test. Good nerve strength, even temperament dogs don’t bite unless told to do so. The easiest way to sort out the dogs that don’t have the temperament for search and rescue is to require the BH. The BH is open to all breeds of dogs and mixed breeds, provided the dog has an identifying ear tattoo or is micro chipped for positive identification.
Team Demonstrates SAR for 14,000 Boy Scouts
Four members of the team and their dogs demonstrated obedience, bark and recall re-find alerts, doggy base ball and finding the training aid hidden in one of 3 trash cans. The biggest pleasure came when the visitor got to interact with the dogs and pet them
Thank Goodness Dogs Can’t Read
Thank Goodness Dogs Can’t Read I was reading through the comments on one of the SAR groups listing and saw an entry where the writer was adamant that a handler should not lay their own tracks. It made me glad my dogs couldn’t read since I’ve been laying my own tracks for training for over …
German Shepherd Tracking: Splitting Hairs
Splitting Hairs I will never forget going to a board of directors meeting as we discussed a tracking standard. The first thing that happened was the discussion descended into defining tracking, trailing and splitting the hairs finer and finer. Here is how the definitions went: ¨ Tracking is when the dog follows footstep to footstep …
