starting a puppy

[GSD07]

Hi experienced SAR people!

I would like to ask you how you start imprinting your new puppy you get with Search and Rescue in mind. How much obedience do you do? Do you take your pup to puppy kindergarten classes? Do you discourage biting and jumping or just ignore and redirect this behaviour? Any information will be very much appreciated!!!

I want to add that I did find a K9 group and started volunteering for training every week. Also I start SAR academy classes next months.

[jocoyn]

-PK yes
-Redirect biting, you may use it later for a tug
-Obedience - motivational - manners - stay away from heeling or antyhing formal

Best thing you can do
-socialization - socialzation-socialization
-getting dog familar with woods
-expose to lots of new experiences

Sar acadamy?

[GSD07]

Nancy, thank you for your response! So I can teach him to sit and walk on a loose leash? I know that socializing is a must and I will be working on it from day one.

I still have to wait for my puppy for almost two months but I want to be prepared. This will be my first working puppy so I'm a bit nervous and afraid to kill that drive .

Well, 'sar academy' is just a name for required classes for all new people that want to join our County Search and Rescue. It's 40 hours of beginning training. K9 team has its own requirements and certifications needed. It's pretty overwhelming for me right now and I'm trying to sort things out a little bit.

[Catu]

Congratulations!!

My first advice alays is to get involved in SAR BEFORE to get a puppy, and I'm very happy you are already in that way. There is very little I could add to Nancy advices, one thing could be to imprint as much self-confidence as possible, informal agility is a good way to. I'm not referring to the pup to do jumps or the classic obstacles, but to let him to learn that he's capable to go inside, below and over everything he finds and even when you are there to offer help and support he has to get over the obstacles by himself. This isalready part of the socialization process, remember he'll be exposed to things than the average pet'd not. Other advice is to build up is prey drive to his full potential, not different than the work you'd do with a young SchH prospect. High drive dogs always make things a lot easier.

[jocoyn]

Good you get off the ground running.

Don't rush to train the puppy these months of building confidence and drive (yes - and sometimes the ball drive is not right away and sometimes you really have the chase drive but not the retrieve drive (but you can build retrieve if the puppy chases) - glad LicanAntai brought that up! Drive builidng.

I am sure the team will have suggestions for each team has their own way they want you to train the dog. Many ways to skin a cat. Just do what they tell you if they are a good team! Everybody loves a puppy!

Rolled up handtowels make great baby puppy tugs but not to hard on the puppy teeth when they are teething. Anything you do bite and tug wise for schtuzhund will work for SAR.

[jocoyn]

So tell us about Yana!

[k9sarneko]

You have already received some great advise here, so I will just add my 2 cents and forgive if it was said above and I am repeating but I am tired so here goes.

You and your new pup are entering a wonderful exciting field of team work that will frustrate the **** out of you, make you laugh, make you cry and give you the most wonderful high you have ever experienced when it all comes together (and it will) There are many, many wonderful handlers out there and they all have something to share. They say that when you get 3 SAR handlers together, the only thing you will get two of them to agree on is that the 3rd handler is wrong!! Learn from everyone, never stop learning, whether the other handler you are watching is experienced or a newby they will show you something that you can learn from. Then don't be afraid to put your own spin on it. Every dog and every handler is different and the relationship between them is different. Take from all, put it in a mixing bowl with a healthy dose of your and your dogs personality and mix it up. Congratulations on the beginning of your wonderful journey in the fantastic world of SAR k9 handler.

[GSD07]

Thank you LicanAntai, Nancy and Sharon for your advice and for being so encouraging! I wish I joined the group earlier but year ago I was still unpacking boxes from our move here and had no idea about things around here.

Sharon, you are so right that handlers disagree on ways of training, I've already noticed that I try to go to every training I can and observe and ask questions, and people are very nice. The only thing is that there is only one handler with a German shepherd in training and that's it. The majority of dogs are labs, there is a spaniel and australian shepherd as well. I was just thinking that GSD is not a lab but I'm sure the principles of training are the same.

Ok, so first of all I'll concentrate on socializing, confidence and drive building. I've never done SchH either but I will look into that.

[GSD07]

Originally Posted By: Nancy JSo tell us about Yana!

Yana is my first dog, she's on my avatar and she's a little over one year old American showline. I wanted to work with her but unfortunately, she lacks all drives and isn't social .

So I'm going with pure DDR puppy right now. I haven't come up with a name for him yet but there is a list of those I like on my refrigerator

[Achielles UD]

I love DDR dogs however, in my experience with one, they are very slow to mature! Mentally I mean. Axel was almost 3 years old before I finally liked him lol He was very hard to train, for me, until he matured a little. With my previous dog, I was trialing him (Achielles) when he was a year and a half old! With Axel, I didn't trial him until he was 5 years old

The DDR dogs IMO are beautiful, but can be slow to mature and harder to work with... just in my experience... but maybe I got a knuckle head lol I have heard others say similar things about DDR dogs.

Good luck!