Working Kennels

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

Originally Posted by Lunas Mom

Hi all,
Being new to the breed, I am very interested in what kennels are known for producing working vlcaks, particularly those who produce vlcaks for dog sports such as Schutzhund, Mondio Ring, etc.

In my opinion there is no such thing as working kennels, there are breeders that work their dogs and prefer owners that work with their dogs. Those breeders of course will have a tendency to use breeding dogs that they know as good workers. I also don´t think that there is any modern breed, especially one which has been favorite for Schutzhund that have taken benefit from the selection for Schutzhund and working lines. The GSH is a good excample for it, the working lines often show a kind of overexited charakter that makes them unsuitable for policework (not to mention the Exterieur) and as a family dog, the Mallinois starts to tend in the same direction, now the Hollandse Herder is getting the next favorite.

Originally Posted by Lunas Mom

I think, as a breed, certain dog sports are "natural" to the vlcak, such as tracking/trailing, hunting, agility, and because they are such an intelligent breed, I think arenas such as Rally or Obedience are also easy for a vlcak.
Dog sports that involve defense and fight drive do require certain character traits that are specific and not necessarily desirable in a dog for a pet home.

There is always a tendency to mix up sport and work in the true sense of the meaning. The tracking/trailing part is a good example, tracking and trailing are two very different things and tracking is not very logical for a wolfdog to do, it surely will be much more difficult to get him to track like the rules require than to trail like work requires. In trailing he can be one of the best (I personally think he can - in his own way - compete with Bloodhounds) Work requiers one important thing that you don´t need for sport: The ability of the dog to work highly concentrated for a long time, not just short sequences and the ability to know when things are getting serious and no longer play. Also the ability to work as a team.

If you want to go into sport inclusive competitions and you want to be succesfull in the sense of winning quite often the CSW is not the right dog. If you want to have fun and look what your special CSW likes, no problem they are kind of allrounders.
But they have one handicap for the sport section, because they learn so very fast they get bored very easily and because they get quite "mature" in character and don´t have the "will to please" in the way for example a Mallinois or a Border Collie has, they are more difficult to keep motivated for things they don´t see any sense in. The latter is in my opinion the only difference in lines, there are countries like the Czech Republic where the Schutzhund section is very popular and many people work in that direction and countries where this is getting less popular and other sections get more popular.
We have two different sections in our dogs at the moment and all of our dogs are working dogs, not sport dogs. They work a lot in cinema films and TV-productions and are known to do this very good, and I train two of our dogs as non-sport trailers.
Lorenz Farouk is out of Czech lines, he is the best for film work and surely would be good in Schutzhund if we had ever bothered to train him for that, he would be good in Obidience etc. He loves the film work and he will do the same sequence for hours totally enthusiastic all the time because he gets attention for this and praised. But he is soon getting on your nerves in the house because he is always on the jump in case you want him to do something and he is the most useless of our dogs in mantrailing because he is overmotivated and can´t remember which trail you follow as soon as you interrupt him. Very unnerving on trails but absolutely no problem in sports or film work where you work in short sequences but need a highly motivated dog.
Falin my trailer is the typical opposite, she will do film work because it is fun, she principally likes to work and you get treats but if you have to repeat the same sequence over and over again she gets bored, she will continue working but not with the same drive as Farouk, she sees no sense in repeating things over and over again simply because you ask her to.
But she is a brilliant trailer, she has done a very old trail of 13 kms a short time ago in about 3 hours, and she would have done more on that day if we would have asked her to. She loves this kind of work, she really lives for it, she can do extremely old trails, Backtrails, Cartrails, two persons out of one scent article, whatever you need. One reason for that is that she does understand this work in the true sense of the meaning and works as a hunting team with me. The other reason is that she is an independent thinker not a highly obedient dog, something that is essential for a trailer, he has to make his own decisions but still work in a team with you.
And yes she did inherit this ability from her mother and her offspring shows the same as far as I saw them on this work.
But I train with several wolfdogs and all are good trailers, several of them have crying wolves ancestors by the way.

Originally Posted by Lunas Mom

Hardness, sharpness, high drive, pack drive, prey/retrieve drive, intensity, focus, handler sensitivity, stability, courage and that thing called "heart."
With their heritage being made up of hard-core working German Shepherds, we should see vlcaks with such a temperament. Of course it isn't always easy to live with or control if you don't have the knowledge or outlet for their drive.

Well, you described a Mallinois and though the CSW shows some of those abilities I truely hope they will never show all of them in the amount a Mallinois shows them, it will create problems and it will change the breed. They don´t only have a Shepherd heritage and it has it´s reason that I don´t own (and don´t want to) Shepherds or Mallinois.

Greetings
Ina