Saturday, June 21, 2008

An Introduction and How we got started


Greetings & Welcome to our blog. My name is Lena, and this is my canine friend Kane, 3.5 years old. We are involved in the dog sport of Schutzhund, and this blog is a digital way for us to keep track of our progress and at the same time keep a log of how our practices and trials go as we inch along on our Schutzhund Adventures.
I am a first-time dog owner, and Kane and I got together through a a set of circumstances involving a newspaper ad, an ex boyfriend and no intention at all of getting a dog. He’s been with me since he was 6 weeks old.
After frantically doing as much research as possible online for puppy-raising, obedience training, food issues, potty training, vaccinations, bath time, nail-clipping and so on, I finally ran into a site called Leerburg.com, owned and operated by Ed Frawley and his staff. This site has an awesome discussion board where level-headed people give much valuable input on various dog raising and dog training issues. This is where I started reading about Schutzhund. Having a German Shepherd, I immediately was fascinated. The control and level of obedience these dogs showed seemed unattainable at first, not to mention the joy that both handler and dog seemed to get from the training and competing – that’s the bond I wanted with my dog.
My dog is not of any fantastic working dog lineage, he is what would be mainly considered American lines, with his great great grandparents being titled schutzhund dogs from some very reputable kennels in Belgium and Germany. I suppose I’ll post a link to his pedigree someday.
Working lines or not, I was really interested in Schutzhund, and after meeting up with my current training group, I brought Kane out to see if he might have the right drives. He sure did.
I’d like to point out again (in case you missed it below my blog title), that I don’t expect to win any championships. Of course, I may dream about it a little, lol, but the main thing is the incredible bond we have developed and how much fun we have practicing. Kane is my buddy, my best friend and I love him fiercely for all the joy he has brought me. We truly enjoy every track, every obedience practice, every bite. We have bad days and good days. Days when I cannot stop smiling because he finally figured out the walking sit. Days when I wonder if we will ever pass the BH.

I’m not sure that I’ll have many readers, but please feel free to drop me a comment if you have any questions or just want to say hi.
I’d like to also take this opportunity to give a huge thank you to our trainer, Richard Shook, and all my friends that I train with on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings. Thanks for all your excellent advice, for challenging us and helping us get to where we are today.

2 comments:

wvfarmgirl said...

Lena,
Kane is beautiful! Having four totally misbehaved mutts myself, I'll be checking back often to live vicariously through you success with Kane. :)

YD, sometimes with ♥June and ♥Angel Samantha said...

Hi Lena, came over from WVFarmgirl's blog.
Welcome to blogging. I started mine a month ago and I am really enjoying it.
Kane is such a handsome dog! I am a dog lover and I have already bookmarked your site.
Good luck with your Schutzhund adventures! :)