Dutch Shepherd Forum

We had so much fun today! We went to customized K9 for an eval with Anthony Rosa per Steve Gossmeyer's recommendation. (Thanks!). He seems great! We hung out for a few hours and met some other folks there, talked about our dogs, bite work, what to expect. They agreed he is a big boy! He seems bigger at 5 mos than some of the adult females. They estimate he'll top out at 80 lbs! He suggested raw feeding which we'll need to price out and look into, but many agreed that for feeding kibble Fromm's is a really good choice. He said Kapena was great, very eager to please with no notable issues.

Kapena LOVED the agility course, he ran through it with all kinds of happy, and even went through the tunnels eagerly. They had us run him a bit with the flirt pole and someone noticed him limping. We checked and couldn't find anything wrong and he stopped so we let it go.

Once we got home I noticed the heel part of his back leg had the skin rubbed off on it! He must've skinned it when he was in turbo mode somehow! I cleaned it up and he doesn't seem to care much about it now. What a tough fella!

We met three other dogs also, and he was all kinds of sensory overload at first with all the new people and things and dogs. Five minutes with Anthony and a new collar and he hasn't jumped at me on leash since! Everyone agreed he is beautiful. We responded with a grateful "Thanks! He knows.".

All in all we are confident this was the right decision for us. Kapena really really likes it there and didn't want to leave. Lol!

Glad everything worked out!

I am glad you had a good time !!!

Females are usually smaller than the males. Thalie is 55 and most of the females I used to work with and around were about the same.

agility with them is a blast ! the course is great for teaching confidence and running your butt off

I'm honestly so excited about our next time out there I can barely wait till Saturday. I'm sure once we make a regular schedule for it he'll feel the same! Listen. I've trained a great many dogs myself and never been unhappy with results. When we got Kapena we knew he would NEED more. We're doing this prematurely, I'm sure we'd be good for another two months before I ran out of things to mentally stimulate him but I've had wire haired fox terriers, dachshunds, plenty of 'hard to train' dogs. He is not hard to train, he's the opposite! He's a sponge!! He picks it up and then gets bored! By the 4th time he's rolling his eyes at me like.... Puhlease, that's too easy. I want him to excel the most he can and me stunting his learning is not going to be good for his quality of life. He compartmentalizes behaviors for people, which is odd. He has a fetch for me, a fetch for my husband, and a fetch for the kids. I've recently noticed how different these behaviors are, and we haven't trained them, he just knows. He is a very different breed indeed.

This is another gratuitous puppy pic. Trainer laughed after getting hands on him and said he keeps checking in with you! Lol. He wouldn't take commands from another man, a stranger we just met until I gave him the OK. What a wonderful fella he is.

so awesome !!!

training with these dogs is never hard, that was never what we all want to get across. Training is easy, its keeping them busy that is hard

they are one human dogs and its hard to get them to take commands from others. Thalie never did, but when it was only me training her, she had no reason. My dad used to get mad when she stayed with them when I was away because she never listened to him. She would know what to do though.

I made sure with Sadie to train her to listen to the kids and it was ok to take commands from them.

a friend of mine posted on FB tht this breed knows what you want before YOU even think it.

I like your update. Too tired to post more.