Author: Sturmfalken

Dogs need protection from the Public

/ Sturmfalken / 2 Comments
The city council of Watertown, NY wants to banish dogs from all public events because of one gruesome incident at the farmers market.
While I understand where they are coming from I must take side with the dogs.
I, in no way defend what happened to that little boy but seriously people, when…when do you realize that hanging onto a strange dogs neck to give them a hug is bad idea? Especially if you have never met that dog before?
Since we moved here I had people sneaking up from behind to hug my dog without asking for permission.

The public doesn’t need protection from dogs. Dogs need to be protected from the public!!!

Dogs are put through impossible situations. They can’t just say: Stop, I don’t like that, leave me alone.
All they have are warning signs and if their owner fails to read his dog, bad things happen. Not because you have a bad dog but because your dog reacted like a (drum roll) D.O.G!

So why don’t you do us dog owners a favor:
1. Ask before you pet a dog
2. Don’t give the dog a hug if the owner doesn’t give permission. There is a huge difference between hugging and petting a dog.
3. If you have multiple kids, one kid at a time
4. No squeeking, yelling, jumping up and down
5. Never sneak or run up from behind a dog to pet without permission.

Dogs and their owners have a right to go on a walk without facing the stalking from unruly kids and their parents. How would you like it if I sneaked up from behind your child, hugged and kissed it without your permission? You would probably call it harrassement and I would be arrested as a child molester and end up on the sex offenders list.
How would you feel if you were stopped every five minutes because somebody wants to pet your baby?
Dogs are treated like stuffed animals. The expectations of dogs are out of this world and our dogs are set up for failure on a daily basis because of people who “just want to pet that cute puppy”, and when you tell them “No, please don’t touch my dog”, they look at you like you hurt their feelings.
A friend of mine has a gorgeous black sable gsd. She is asked on a daily basis and says no all the time. She says that he isn’t friendly and yet people proceed “oh that is okay, it doesn’t matter. Can I pet him?”
It is not okay. It does matter. She just said he is not friendly and yet people want to pet him?
Guess what happens if he bit someone? She would be sued and he would possibly be put to sleep.
Yet, its the public that needs protections from dogs? Can you see the notorious pattern here. No, the public doesn’t need protection. The public needs to use common sense. Stop treating dogs like stuffed animals and toys. Stop treating them like humans. Stop applying human rules to dogs. If the public would treat them like dogs and used a little more common sense, accidents like at the farmers market could have been prevented from happening.
And to all dog owners in Watertown: grow some dog sense. Say “No, I don’t want you to pet my dog.”
The child will get over it. And please confine your dogs. Its not cool to run into loose dogs every time I go on a walk.

Team Training

/ Sturmfalken / 2 Comments
Last Sunday we started our team training with one of the best, if not the best, trainer ny has to offer. One thing I like about the trainer is her brutal honesty. She does not hold anything back and does not accept any kind of bs. She is highly professional and expects the same from her students. Especially from us since we are involved with sar and literally represantatives of our team and have to deal with public perception.

So if I am riding around with a bunch of dogs in my car I can’t have them barking frantically in there because it leaves a very bad impression to the public. However, keeping them from doing that is not all that easy because they are feeding off of each other. They literally build each other up.feed off each others excitement and end up rambling in the car. Two together work. Three, it depends which three I put together. If Judge is in the car I can forget about it. He is the worst of all. Very very vocal, super easy excited and very hard to calm down. The new trainer showed us a training method how to teach the dogs self control in these kind of situations. I wonder why I didn’t about it myself. It is such a simple concept and all it requires is food, patience and consistency, which I have been lacking in the past months. Anyhow, in the past two days I have worked on those crate games and seen the first results already. I must say they are a god sent. Especially since it does teach self control and is also one more step towards directionals. Thankfully, due to the akc grant, our team has received, we can afford to take classes with her and I am truly thankful for the opportunity. 

One year ago, today

/ Sturmfalken
I can’t believe that it has been one year that I moved to the United States. 
It’s been one eventful year, with lots of new experiences, doing things I’ve never dreamed of doing and many new experiences to come. I joined the SAR team, we bought the house, fostered 6 dogs, have four Shepherds and now one Malinois… hubby deployed and without the dogs it would be much harder to go through the deployment. Since we don’t have kids, the dogs keep me company and busy. I can’t even imagine what it would be like without them. Not sure if I would have even stayed here or if we had bought the house. We’d probably live on post and I would have went back to Germany to live with my family. I wouldn’t have even made the friends I have. Wouldn’t know my two best friends, Chris and Connie. The only reason we know each other is due to the dogs and I am truly thankful for their friendship and guidance. These two Ladies have made it so easy to settle in.
Since then I made one tripe with my friend Bekah, to NYC to pick up Judge, another one back to Washington Dulles to pick up Nala and will probably make another one for Zorro. 
I’ve got the DEC, the searches I need to go for the Crew Boss, Indra is pretty much ready to certify and we’ve made new contacts with other K9 Handlers to meet up to train. 
Other than that there have been many adventures and I am sure that there are many to come. 

Obstacles

/ Sturmfalken

You can read more about our adventure over at Dogs for Defense. 

The weather in upstate New York has been unseasonably warm and this past weekend was just wonderful for heading outdoors and having fun with the dogs, rather than getting stuck with all the Black Friday shoppers at the mall. (Although we did do some of that on Saturday … ended up going to TJ Maxx and getting some really good deals on winter gear.) (…)

Living with four German Shepherds

/ Sturmfalken
I read my friends review on a new book on living with German Shepherds and thought I’d have to chime in on a view things:

At times, the author’s writing made me wonder if he’s ever lived with three German Shepherds in the house at the same time. Particularly where he mentions that the fur is so bad, he’s had to hire a maid to clean the house once a week. I have to admit, that made me snicker. When I had both my German Shepherd and my Belgian Malinois, the two of them produced enough hair that it was hard to catch up on the cleaning if I didn’t vacuum every day … let alone if I only vacuumed once a week. Even now, with a Belgian Malinois who doesn’t shed nearly as much as a Shepherd – she doesn’t have the thick undercoat – I end up vacuuming at the very least every other day. My friend Sandra, over at Head over Heels, lives with four German Shepherds. I assure you she cleans much more than once a week.

 Cleaning once a week is impossible. Once a week with three dogs doesn’t cut it. I’ve lived with one, then two, then three, then four, then 7, back to four, again five and now four dogs at the same time. Cleaning once a week… sure you can do it if you like to live in filth and dog hair. Even with cleaning once every day you end up having dog hair on your furniture, in the car and your clothes. That is just the way it is. There is a reason why they are called “German Shedders”. They shed – a lot!
As for the rest of the review, I would never trust my dogs outside, unleashed, unsupervised, of a church. I put a great deal of training into my dogs but I would never trust them, throughout an entire mess, to just lay there. The best trained dogs in the world could see something exciting and decide to take off. Just yesterday we went to a parade. Indra is the dog in this household who has received the most training, who should be the most well behaved dog of all of them, however, when we walked to the Parade, she was so excited, so pumped up that she started talking, singing and pulling on the leash. She wasn’t jumping up on anyone but boy oh boy, only because she couldn’t be there, right next to Ronja, poor girl could have missed something and how dare I keep her back from walking right there next to her Girlfriend. 
During the Parade, all of them behaved perfectly well. Nala had a problem with sitting still because she’s just so darn driven and energetic it’s really hard for her to wrap her mind around the concept of sitting still. For the two weeks I’ve had her, she did perfectly though. 
Yukon did absolutely awesome. Two years ago I could have not taken him to an event like that. He was doing great. 
There is a lot of work that is going into my dogs. We work on the whole program and Indra is very close to beeing certified as a Wilderness Area Search and Rescue Dog, yet I would not want my dogs to be unsupervised, off leash, somewhere outside a building underneath a tree while I’m gone for about an hour if not even longer than that. 
No responsible dog owner would ever do that. Not in todays, sue happy, society.