Recent content by PopeHolySmoke

If you're interested in learning more about this, Inside of a Dog and Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz are great reads. She was one of the first to study dog cognition and runs the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. It's fascinating stuff.

Before my job moved to WFH, my girl stayed out in her fenced yard all day. She had a small sand pit to dig in and a bunch of toys. She mostly slept in her house or under the deck with an occasional patrol of the fence. And then we would have to do a lot of stuff when I got home. I was lucky...

We used to get a lot of GSDs in SAR that washed out of service dog training because they were too high drive. Not so much anymore. A lot of handlers liked them be they didn't have to go through the puppy phase and the dogs had obedience training done. They funny thing about them was that a lot...

My first question would ranked by whom and what does the ranking entail? There's a lot of ways to rank GSDs. If it's me, I couldn't give a crap about the ranking. I'd be more focused on the pedigrees of the sire and dam, what tites they have, and what health tests have been done. That will...

We see a lot of Labs in SAR, and the great ones are always smaller with a ton of drive. Those are the ones that, as an vowed GSD handler, I see them work and say I could see myself with that dog. But that's rare.

Based on her parents I thought I was going to get a nice sized 60 - 65 lb female. It quickly turned into you're gonna need a bigger crate. She's 48" from snout to rump which is the radius from a source that the dog has to indicate in for our HRD tests. The unit of measurement in our group...

This is going to be a long answer, lol. General rules: High quality meat based proteins with named meats as the first ingredients. Dehydrated eat is best followed by meat meal because they're low moisture which means more protein. As an example, raw chicken is up to 73% water which is lost in...

A bomb proof recall is my favorite thing. Seeing the dog think my hoomin needs me, pin the ears back, and go full afterburners to get back to you is a beautiful thing.

I think it's become a problem with a lot of breeds. It seems, in the US at least, that people want larger dogs and instead of getting a breed that was bred to be the size they want, they want a larger version of whatever breed they like. With GSDs being consistently one of the most popular...

Ah cool, I wasn't sure if you were just doing it at home but presumed it's off kead. I see so many people wonder why their obedience breaks down when they're out and about and then find out they've never trained anywhere other than at home or at classes. That's probably second only to people...

I'll disagree with this. The breed should be on the smaller size. The larger size contributes to a lot of health problems, especially with hips and knees. My girl could be even better at her job if she was 15 - 20 lbs smaller. She runs around 80 - 82 lbs of solid muscle while her sisters are...

Raw is great if you have the time to go buy the ingredients, do the prep, and store it safely. I don't feed raw because it's not practical for me. I don't have the time to do the prep, I'd have to buy another freezer (I already have two in the garage), and we travel which makes dealing with raw...

At some point you'll need to take that on the road and practice it places away from home where you can have him safely off lead or he won't generalize the behavior. With my dog and her job, the recall and emergency stop are her two most important commands, and they have to 100% no matter where...

Ah, 21.2% expert escape artist!

When I was a kid my neighbors had a GSD and I've loved the breed ever since. My first dog as an adult was a GSD - Husky mix and I could see which traits came from the GSD half, so when I started working dogs I knew I was going to have GSDs. After 20+ years of living with GSDs, I don't think I...