Dutch Shepherds

[Maliraptor]

I've known the Asheley from back in her GSD days. (Vrijheid Kennels) Her foundation female is the DS in the early Ivan Balanabov videos.

If I were to get a DS, I would absolutely go with Van Leeuwen, but I'm looking for/want a different type of dog for sport.

I've owned two DS. One was a striped pup from a Mal x DS litter, he ended up a narcotics PD. The other was super sweet guy, fun to live with, but very very little prey drive. He is now in an agility home. Both were from KNPV lines.

 

[stafinois]

Btw, I have said this before but start now. Meet a club, be an extra body, pose as a mock judge, a track layer, a group member, help with set up and clean up, anything. Start tracking with your current dogs, practice IPO style obed with your dogs, and learn about puppy foundations by hands on helping other members. Our club could always use an extra body.

I would also bet you can't really judge your dogs opinion of Bitework without a proper introduction. You may never have a regional dog or even a club trial dog but you can learn a lot by just being around and training. It will totally make your choice, of get a shepherd breed or not, easier and I think you should know approximately your interest before getting a dog for the sport because most dogs bred with the sport in mind are happiest there and thus asking them to mold into another lifestyle can be challenging for most handlers.

Hope that helps, there is so much more to IPO than buying a dog with all the potential.

:thumbsupsmileyanim:

 

[BlackPuppy]

If you are looking for an IPO dog, definitely go for the working hybrids as mentioned.

The FCI pedigrees are what are being accepted into the AKC, though. Some can do IPO. You need to find the right breeder for that. I know of somebody breeding working line dogs in the USA that you can register with the AKC. He even has customers in The Netherlands buying his puppies.

If you are just interested in a dog for fun stuff other than IPO competitions, the FCI will suit you just fine. They run slightly smaller than the IPO dogs. If that's what you are interested in you can watch our Facebook page for news, information, and events. We are the American Dutch Shepherd Association, (formerly DSCNA). You can get the facebook link here. http://dutchshepherdclub.com/ I really need to talk to our webperson about updating our name on the website.

The club was also at the Detroit KC Meet the Breeds that I was at last Saturday with my Laekenois. There are photos from that on our Facebook page, too.




Facebook won't let us change the name on the Facebook page, so I don't know what we are going to do about that.