Tegan

[imajpm]

This is my "national level" sports GSD. Or so he is supposed to be Turns out he is a dear sweet nut job. No thresholds whatsoever, totally reactive. We have spent a long long time working on the small stuff, the normal dog stuff. He is coming along but in the process (nightmare) I have fallen madly in love with my boy So this is Tegan. Wicked smart, and wicked nuts lol.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

Handsome boy!

How old is he now?

Are you planning on doing some type of performance sport with him?

 

[imajpm]

He is a year and a half old now. And naww, he's not capable of any sport, mentally. He is terribly reactive to cars, been working on that a long time now but he cannot travel. Luckily there are vets who still make house calls! I was originally planning on agility, obedience and tracking but he's got no thresholds for any kind of stimulation so it's extremely difficult to get him to focus. He generally just blows his fabulous brain, and triggers into instant over excitement and/or hysteria, depending on what it is. And 80 pounds of young powerful hysteria is hard to handle!

So we are still working on walking nicely, getting brushed calmly, and desensitization for his many triggers. There was a long period where I was just angry, upset, and disappointed, but now I've learned so much from him that I am happy to have him. He is totally the type to end up in a shelter but he won't ever know that horror.

He was supposed to be a sports dog but I think his breeder is breeding very close to the edge. The rest of his litter turned out well. She had him pegged for sport and said he was a real maniac of a pup but she didn't recognize that his mania was a lack of threshold and not sport ability, which sucks. But he is brilliant, loving, and does not have a mean bone in his body.


Anyway he is my baby and I love my hot crazy mess of a boy! It would be boring if he were easy