And you thought normal dog training was difficult. Sit, stay, down, come, heel… all require weeks or more of dedicated trainer and dog effort to master. Now, consider the months or years needed to train a police, search and rescue, guide or other service dog. Training these special animals starts with careful selection. It’s no…
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Once upon a time, seeing-eye (guide) dogs were almost the only type of assistance dog around. Over the last few decades, the field has widened considerably. Today, dogs help the hearing impaired, the blind, wheelchair bound and bedridden. Others simply provide a new kind of therapy for prisoners, burn victims, the clinically depressed or merely…
It’s no accident that some breeds are more commonly found as working dogs. Retrievers, Shepherds and a few others tend to have the physical characteristics, intelligence and temperament needed to perform the complex behaviors even they need several years to master. Specialized training for service, assistance or even therapy dogs begins before birth and continues…
Dogs, like humans, show a wide range of tolerance for others. Some are immediately friendly with every new dog, cat or lizard. Others are forever hostile to even the opposite sex of their own breed. Considering dogs are by nature territorial the diversity is odd, but there it is. Naturally, animal lovers like to have…
The term ‘purebred’ is relative. No breed has been so isolated that it’s never mated with another. But taken over the last hundred years or so, there are populations of Golden Retriever, German Shepherds and many others that have bred only with their own kind. As with any inbreeding program, the results tend to produce…