Dog trains man

Friday, January 27, 2012

Calling all Wizards To the Hovawart School of Witchcraft & Wizardry

Do you think they come and play?
The Hovawart is a Magical Creature. And in the Hovawart School of Witchcraft & Wizardry we study how it is like to live side by side with a Hovawart in our Care for Magical Creatures class. What does a Hovawart need and expect from Muggles - those not yet touched by the Hovawart's magic?

Unlike the school with the name that sounds a lot like ours, we do welcome Muggles! We invite all Muggles to come and hear the tales of the Wizards - those that have been touched by the Hovawart's magic.

After all, the choice for a particular Magical Creature breed requires a good match with the Muggle, in life style as well as temperament, and real-life info from Wizards is of key importance for Muggles to choose the right Magical Creature breed. A good match makes happy Hovawarts and happy Muggles!

We are calling all Wizards to the Hovawart School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. Maybe once upon a time, when you were a Muggle yourself, you found it difficult to find stories about Hovawarts, as compared to other Magical Creatures? I did. And I felt a little like going in way over my head when we got Kenzo as our first Hovawart, solely based on the recommendations of a friendly - and competent - breeder, together with the occasional Wizard's blog/website and the obligatory breed encyclopedia.

What I would like to achieve together with you Wizards, is to provide real life information for Muggles to learn more about Hovawarts. A place where Muggles can read how we play, what kind of training and activities we undertake. What makes Hovawarts special to us, and how they made us into Wizards. The role they came to play in our lives. And the hard times we shared. Helping Muggles to make the best choice possible if a Hovawart could be the Magical Creature for them, or at least what to expect. What do you think? Shall we help them?

Here is how Wizards can participate. We are excited to hear about you and your Hovawart!

Coming up soon ... the first installment: Wizard Kelsey and her Hovawart Ethanah!

***

Last but not least, a big Thank You to AJ from I Still Want More Puppies, for being the creative mastermind behind the whole Harry Potter pun.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Dog Walks Man ... With Poop Bag

Where is the bag? We don't go without it.
Half a year ago I promised we would become a Poop Fairy, every day picking up one doggy deposit that doesn't belong to Kenzo & Viva. Apart from the daily scooping, making this promise to Amy Burket from Go Pet Friendly made me more aware of the whole debate surrounding our four-legged friends and we made some peculiar observations.

I thought you should always pick up after your dog. But apparently not. I discovered that in Holland they had poop lanes. Workers operating special designed scooping machines - like lawn-mowers - were doing their best to keep up with the poop flows. Some places had doggy restrooms, a small fenced in area, which no dogs even wanted to visit, with good reasons. Workers had to clean out those as well.

Poop is bringing employment to Holland. When we visited Holland last week, there was even a very real "dog poop symposium", in which 60 municipalities and counties exchanged "how to's" on dog poop, and how to get it scooped. It has become a business.

Back in Denmark, I found out by accident the Danish laws that poop should be scooped by the dog's owner had become obsolete. The scooping laws were a part of some police regulations, that everybody forget to address when they reformed the police some years ago. Scooping thereby became the responsibility of the person who lives on the ground adjacent to the public space, and not the dog owner. They are even liable if someone would slip in the poop and would harm themselves. I kid you not.

Reading a good book doesn't free me from my newly gained awareness. Even John Zeaman, author of the (otherwise fabulous and must read book) "Dog Walks Man", went to great lengths to find places to walk his dog where he could convince himself scooping surely was not necessary here.

I makes me wonder how poop did become such a topic that we need legislation, new industries, well-meaning lobbyist's and action groups. It all comes down to a man (yes it always seem to be man) with his dog that doesn't want to clean up. It is so simple: dog+man+bag=problem solved. 

Ladies, demand from your spouse to display one bagged deposit (two if he is a Poop Fairy) on return from the dog walk. Use your positive reinforcement wits and praise him for every pile you see in the open: "I am so glad you are not doing that and clean up after Fido". I can see it work, can you?
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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Shiloh adopted after 2 years

Maybe you remember Shiloh the Hovawart? She featured on this blog during Adopt-A-Less-Adoptable-Pet Week and before that, we raised the funds for her second FHO hip surgery.

I am so thrilled for Shiloh. An elderly couple from Idaho adopted her. They owned a Hovawart before and found Shiloh on Petfinder. They flew to Charlotte (NC) together with their Yorkie and met with Shiloh. Fell in love, and rented a car for the trip back home. With Shiloh on the back seat.

Sometimes there seemed to be no hope. More than 125 people tweeted about Shiloh, some daily in more than a year. Bloggers wrote about her. She featured as Pet-of-the-Week on NC's local TV station. As it seemed, to no avail. But finally, after more than two years, Shiloh has a family.

In all that time Shiloh was in the care of the no-kill rescue project HALO, and in particular Shiloh's foster dad, Tim Roney. They are the real heroes in this story. Please pay a visit to their website of like/leave a note on their FB page. I am sure they will appreciate.
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Pet Blogger Challenge: Round Two


Edie Jarolim of Will My Dog Hate Me and Amy Burket of Go Pet Friendly are again hosting the Pet Blogger Challenge this year.

The time has arrived to show how far we have come after last year's challenge. I will not give up my blog as safe haven for the world of deadlines and numbers without a fight though. Like last year, maybe I can spin myself out of this again?

I gave it a lot of thought:













It sounds like I am cornered. It is time to come clean and give some honest answers, so here we go:

1. Provide a link to your post from last year’s Pet Blogger Challenge so we can refresh our memories.

Last year's post was Bad, bad blog, I cheated with the format. And worse, cheated even more by writing another one the next day: The Day After. I'll be a good boy this year though.

2. What do you consider the most important goals you set out in last year’s post?

I hadn't made any specific goals. On the other hand the overall goal of the blog is still the same. To provide real-life experiences living together with Hovawarts.

3. Have you made progress toward those goals, or have your goals changed over the past year?

Last year's Pet Blogger Challenge and the discussions that followed, helped in finding more focus on the mission of this blog. After all this is a blog about Hovawarts and I do tend to get carried away in other subjects as well. So I made sure to add more regularity to the Hovawart as the main subject.

During the year we took on the additional goal to help getting the Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) repealed in Denmark. Again an unrelated subject, but in the eye of so much suffering and injustice, I can't do anything else than to speak out against it. Whatever the breed, Hovawart or not. We will continue to help the Danes in getting the word out and support Danish organizations like Fair Dog in the fight against BSL. I willl take this opportunity and once more ask you shamelessly if you already signed the petition?



4. Has your opinion of blogging on a schedule or as the spirit moves you changed? Which are you doing now? Do you still worry about lost traffic, momentum, etc?

I still blog as the spirits moves me. But without last year's guilt of not being on a schedule: thanks to last year's Pet Blogger Challenge I came to terms with this. I try to find a good balance between keeping my readers interested and to continue to enjoy what I do. There is nothing more rewarding than that. You will find no schedules here, although I do resist the "publish" button more. Meaning I write as the spirit moves me, but try to "publish" in what appears to be a more scheduled rhythm.

Of course I admit having to swallow an additional time when I see visits plunge after a longer period of silence, like when Viva was diagnosed with Cushings disease and during the latest busy at work episode. Nobody wants to write for an ever declining audience. On the other hand it is encouraging to see search engines continue to send queries about Hovawarts to the blog during periods of silence. I especially like the "Hovawart puppy" searches that go to our post about the Hovawart puppy mill. In the end that it is what matters, that people find the blog when looking for information about Hovawarts.

Blogger statistics, very rudimentary, tell me that I have on average 2,000 monthly readers when I don't blog, and up to 6,000 when I blog. The year before ended with only one third of those numbers, although that was also the year we started with blogging. Two months ago I installed Feedburner and Google Analitics, so I can see better where people are coming from and what they are (not) reading in the future. I am not sure what to use those numbers for, but I love to fiddle around with the techy side of the blog and procrastinate with that. I'll hope to get some clues reading the challenge posts from other bloggers to learn more about how it could help.

5. Are you generating income from your blog? Has this changed since last year?
If you are generating income, how (e.g. sponsor ads, affiliate relationships, spokesperson opportunities)?
If not currently, do you hope to in the future — and how?

We have no desire to sell anything through this blog. And that will probably not change. But we all know what they say about the offer you can't refuse. I am listening.

6. Have your likes and dislikes about blogging changed since last year?

My likes are still the same. To connect with readers and other bloggers. I am still a sucker for comments that make me see things differently or add to the story. It is that interactivity that makes blogging so much more rewarding than other forms of writing.

What stands out for me in 2011 was how other bloggers rallied behind the BSL campaign on this blog and to what lengths they went to support and help me. Not only writing about it on their own blogs, but also coming with ideas what to do and how to move this forward. I never asked, they just did it. It was inspiring and invigorating.

7. Overall, are you pleased with the progress you made in 2011?

Progress is best measured in real-life results. One of the best reinforcers was when I got some real proof visitors were actively using the blog to form their opinion on the Hovawart. One of them, Kelsey M., was so kind to get back in touch and mention the blog as an "indispensable source of real-life information". Kelsey found a responsible Hovawart breeder and is now living with "Ethana". It gives all the motivation needed to keep on blogging for another year - or more.

8. How do you see your blog changing/growing in 2012?

I would really like to do more with all the contacts established through time with other Hovawart people. It would be great to be able to write, or let them write, about their experiences with Hovawarts as well. I have a plan for this year to try getting them more involved. I have not come around it yet, because I am not looking for breed superlatives and overly optimistic views, but real-life information, and mistakes made which we can all learn from.

There is a huge wild-card though. As we are traveling more and more for our work - if you read this blog before you remember the dogs always join us on those trips - it is not unlikely we start to blog about that a lot more if it all materializes the way I expect it to. A Hovawart Pet Travel Blog, how is that for a niche? I will have a dozen readers at least. But in essence that is what it is about for us. The blog should follow us, Kenzo & Viva. Not the other way around.

It was good coming clean. Now I am off reading all about you other bloggers. I am sure you will be as inspiring to me as last year.
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Saturday, January 7, 2012

What can you do else than smile

I found myself in that vacuum right after the Christmas and New Year's events that we heard so much about. Even pork cracklings that turned out to be a very international thing after all, couldn't do much about that. As well as the thoughtful presents of our dinner guests, DVD's of "Marley & Me" and "Hachiko", in which I couldn't find a lot of happy endings. If you have seen them, you know what I mean.

Right after the New Year we hunkered down as a hurricane visited Northern Europe, which is very rare, leaving a trail of destruction, followed by floods due to the rain and the rising sea levels. Nobody was hurt and there was only material damage. But by now I was gasping after something upbeat.

When we went on our first dog walk after the hurricane I was looking at all the flooding and fallen trees, but Kenzo & Viva didn't let me dwell in those thoughts for too long. Where I see destruction, they see opportunity. Every flooded area was met with excitement to demonstrate the zoomies. Every fallen tree with jumping, hide-and-seek and some extra sniffing.

What can you do else than smile in the face of so much joy. Especially when you least expect it.


Viva observing Kenzo's Bambi impression


Zoomies!


Zoomie chase


Is it deep over there?
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Friday, December 23, 2011

Howling Hovie Holiday Wishes

That's all you got ?!
We wish you a Merry Christmas and Howling Hovie Holidays! We hope you will have a couple of great days together with everybody and everything you hold dear.

As you can see on the picture, Kenzo & Viva are extremely disappointed as snow didn't visit for Christmas this year, apart from some pathetic snowflakes the other day.

We admit to envy all the beautiful white imagery displayed over at Lilly and Ginko in Boulder and Bajnok and Derria in Norway. They are so lucky with all that snow.

But Kenzo & Viva will enjoy their special holiday treat ... pork skin. Yummy.

www.flaeskesteg.dk
Danmark is one of the few places in the world where pork skin - "Flæskesteg" - is actually on the human menu as well. We are making a traditional Danish Christmas dinner for our family so there will be plenty of pork skin around.

As an expat, I had to try it. It actually tastes alright, but my Dutch mind cannot come around eating pork skin. There will be plenty falling off my plate for Kenzo & Viva. They love it.

On one of our holiday trips back to Holland, I promised to prepare it for my family. The Dutch butcher was horrified when I ordered a piece of pork with the skin still attached and telling him what I needed it for didn't help calming him down. He could only prepare it when a new shipment arrived, and after returning to pick it up, the entire staff was signaling each other: "That's him!". My Dutch family took it well, by the way.

So taking the menu and the absence of snow into account, me, Kenzo & Viva will launch yet another charming offensive for the family to migrate more up North. We want snow to go with our pork skin.

Happy Holidays!
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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Twitter Giveaway - Support Your Animal Charity of Choice With Cash



A group of bloggers are giving away 325$ in a social media holiday event:
  • 213$ to your animal charity of choice and 
  • 112$ all to yourself.
Last week you could use your Facebook account to participate and this week the event has come to Twitter.

Tell in the comment section which animal charity you would like to support and raffle with your Twitter account in the "Rafflecopter" below. Remember to return next week when you can raffle with your Google+ account too. In order to win you do not have to participate in all three parts of this event. We know that not all of you have accounts on all three platforms which is why they have been separated so everyone has the same opportunity. Good luck !

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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Hovawarts To The Rescue

This week I turn my blog over to Caroline Dunn - dog trainer, Search and Rescue handler, and Hovawart enthusiast - to provide us with a peek in the exciting world of scent and how you and your dog can do nose work too.

Venka, the Search and Rescue Hovawart, courtesy of MindYourDog
How did I get involved with Search and Rescue (SAR) and the wonderful world of nose work? Well, it all started with a Hovawart. A hov… what!? I hear you say. No, nothing to do with the famous school for witches and wizards. Although I think I may have been struck by a spell for luck the day I came across this rare German breed.

The Hovawart is a versatile general-purpose working dog from Germany, calm in the house but full of energy outdoors. They have been known since the middle age as faithful protectors of their families, watching the livestock and their master’s property, while also being excellent at tracking criminals.

Venka, courtesy of MindYourDog
Ours is called Venka. She has been working as an operational lowland SAR dog since she qualified with NSARDA in 2007. Many people have met our bouncy girl. She will lean on you for a cuddle at any opportunity. But nobody really knows Venka until they have seen her searching. Working with a Hovawart is a fantastic experience. It is all about respect and teamwork. They work with you, not for you. They have an excellent understanding of their task, great focus, but still retain a sense of initiative.

A lot of SAR handlers work border collies, some have spaniels or labradors. We have no reason to envy them. Hovawarts are amazing working dogs. To be fair though, many canines have the potential to be great for the job. Most of the breeds from the gundog, pastoral and working groups could do it, apart from those at the very end of the scale in term of size and weight. Having said that, I knew a SAR Newfoundland and once he had picked up scent, he was unstoppable. Mongrels don’t have to stay on the "back bench" either. We have a fantastic rescued boy called Red currently training in our unit, who is believed to be a collie x staffie. I will be very surprised if he does not pass with flying colours before the end of the year.

You may wonder what SAR dogs do exactly. Most use a technique called air scenting to find vulnerable missing people. They analyse scent that is being carried in the air. Many elements such as temperature, wind and terrain will affect how scent travel and a real partnership between the dogs and their handlers is necessary to ensure success. The dogs cover vast area off the lead, following directional commands from their handler and constantly checking and reviewing scent. Once they identify human scent, they will pinpoint the source, alert their handler, usually by a bark, before taking them to the location of the person.

You don’t have to join a SAR unit to have fun with your dog though. Getting started with scent work is easy. Here is a simple and fool proof method to teach a basic game at home, without any special equipment and whichever breed your dog is. You will only need a helper to get you started.

Start in a closed room, hold your dog and ask your helper to show them a "prize" such as a dog biscuit or a favourite toy. If needed, they may tease by shaking it in front of your dog's nose and talking to them in an exciting manner. Then, they should place the prize just out of sight, for instance behind a box or a piece of furniture, and take a few steps back. Release your dog saying "go search". As they have seen where the prize was placed, they should go straight to it. When they do, praise them. Play with them for a short time if the prize was a toy. Repeat this once or twice, not necessarily with the prize in the same place.

The next step is slightly different.  Your helper should still place the prize just out of sight. But then, instead of releasing your dog, either cover their eyes or turn them towards you so they can’t see what is happening. Your helper should then as quietly as possible move the prize a little further. Keep it simple at first, the prize should be on the floor and within a relatively short distance. When you release your dog - remember to say "go search" - they should go straight to the place where they think the prize is. They will be surprised that it is not where they though and start searching. Unless the dog stops searching or looks too confused, don’t repeat the command. I see many people who think they are encouraging their dog, while they are actually distracting them. SAR dog handlers direct their dogs during searches, but they also know when to shut up and let their dog work. Well, have you ever try to concentrate on something while your colleague is speaking loudly on the phone or your teenager has put the volume up on their stereo? And dogs are not always a lot better at multi-tasking than men… come on guys, you know you can't talk while you're shaving!

Coming back to our scent game, once you have done this a few times in different locations in the room, your dog should not need to see the helper place the prize to a "dummy" location first. Instead, cover your dog's eyes or turn them towards you from the start, have your helper hide the prize and then send your dog with a "Go search". Always use the same cue when releasing the dog.

The dog will very shortly understand the game enough so that you won’t need a helper anymore, simply place your dog in one room, close the door and hide the prize in the next room. Open the door saying "Go search" and watch your dog go.

Then the limit to how far you take this game is only your imagination, you can make your dog search one room, the whole house, the garden, the dog park… If you do not always use the same prize, then make sure that the dog is shown it first and has a chance to sniff it. Otherwise, you may be surprised what your dog will find for you!

There are many more scent games you can play with your dog. Air scenting is just one aspect, then there is trailing, tracking, scent discrimination, etc… Why not check if your local club offers any scent activities or join a nose work boot camp? All dogs love scent work, it is suitable for all size and breed. Learn the techniques and take your relationship with your dog to a whole new level. People who have dogs who always seem to want to do more will get the added benefit of finally finding an activity that will tire their dog out. Scent games can even help with dogs who bark or get destructive when bored.

About Caroline Dunn
Caroline lives in Kent with her family and their hovawarts. She is the head trainer at Mind Your Dog, where she create happy relationships between pet dogs and their owners. Caroline and her husband James are also members of NSARDA Cantech, a charity which provides SAR dog teams to assist in locating vulnerable missing people.

For more information about Search & Rescue dogs visit the NSARDA and the Air scenting search dogs websites.

For more information about Mind your Dog events, including their scent workshops, visit the Mind Your Dog website or follow Caroline on Twitter.

This story was first published on Safe Pets UK.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Facebook Giveaway - Support Your Animal Charity of Choice With Cash



A group of bloggers are giving away 325$ in a social media holiday event:
  • 213$ to your animal charity of choice and 
  • 112$ all to yourself.


Tell in the comment section which animal charity you would like to support and raffle with your Facebook account in the "Rafflecopter" below. Remember to return next week when you can raffle with your Twitter and your Google+ account too. Good luck !

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Sunday, December 11, 2011

Once Upon a Time There Was a Mutt


The modern Hovawart
You probably remember the BBC show Pedigree Dogs Exposed. In 2009, it revealed how breeders prefer exterior characteristics above health. Crippled and sick dogs became the winners of dog shows and were used in breeding. The end of the pedigree dog as we know it was predicted.

What about the Hovawart?
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