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I love German Shepherds. My family used to breed big black German Shepherds, for temperment. My favourites were Khan, a big solid black fellow with golden paws who was placid as hell. He now lives with a sweet old lady and dotes on her all day. Then there was Kaycee who was a nutball that collected 2 liter coke bottles. And Bear, who was 12,000% certain that my mother was God. He was a good boy but we had to put him down after he lost his sight and hearing. There was a couple of incidents where he nearly hurt people because he simply couldn't identify them until he was on top of them, and his job was to protect mum at all costs from unknown enemies. The last straw was when my dad was in their closed shop alone with Bear, who was sleeping at his feet. One of the staff had just left and her 6 year old daughter needed to pee so she opened the door back up and told her to go in the staff bathroom at the back. The little girl ran straight down the hallway and Bear went into intruder mode and barrelled out of the side room and pinned her to the floor. Didn't hurt her, but scared the everloving poo poo out of her. After that mum made the decision and I had the honour of holding him as he went to sleep (she couldn't do it). After that my mother decided to travel Australia in a campervan and got a new dog - A Swiss Shepherd. All white. However I'm sad to say that she didn't treat the new pup right - even worse in my opinion because she knows better. The new pup, Kit, was terrified of cars (so spent every second of the travels a shivering mess) and so meek and anxious she'd pee if you as much as looked at her wrong. Pretty much the polar opposite of Bear. She was barely trained and scared of everything. My mother gave her to us for Christmas, when she was 11 months old and told us to sell her and whatever we made from the sale would be my wifes Christmas present. A week with us, and she had the basics of training down with my wife. A month, and she had realised that I wasn't going to murder her (she was scared of dudes especially for some reason). It is now nearly June and we cannot sell this dog. She's smart and bright and playful and extremely affectionate. She plays with our two kids (aged 3 and 4) and has a weird thing about cats - she may be confused as to whether she is one. Loves our Ragdoll cross like she were one of her own puppies. She stays in the yard and will walk with you without a lead, and loves loves LOVES hugs. She'll lean into you and rub herself along your thigh like a cat and is quite demanding with the nose/ear rubs. Not afraid of people now, and will bark at people approaching the front gate, but if they're brave enough to enter, doesn't attack, but retreats to whichever door they're headed for and sits quietly and refuses to let them through, unless one of us say its okay. Case in point, generally someone enters the yard we'll check it out, and she checks us - if we don't seemed bothered, then she isn't bothered. If we're welcoming, she's welcoming. The only time she's been "aggresive" is when a jehovahs witness came into the yard and my wife (a hardcore athiest scientist with precisely zero time for religion) opened the door so it was her and Kit inside and the JW outside behind the screen door. My wife was calm and nice about the whole thing "oh no thanks, we're good not interested at all have a nice day" but Kit must have picked up on the underlying "gently caress off" and growled at the guy. So we got a giveaway Swiss Shepherd that with some stability and love and attention, turned out to be a kickass member of our family. I went looking for pics but don't have any on my PC.
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May 29, 2016 16:35
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 09:35 |
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Ausrotten posted:White Swiss shepherds (and white shepherds in general) are garbage dogs with absolutely terrible nerves and temperament problems. It's cool that she's somewhat less hosed up than she used to be but tbh there's like a 99% chance she'd had lovely fear problems even if given the worlds most perfect puppy raising experience because fear problems are so endemic in the """"breed"""" She's a completely different dog. If you met her 6 months ago compared to now you'd barely recognise her. It was stupid of my mother to go out and get a Swiss Shepherd when what she clearly wanted was an out-and-out replacement for Bear (but didn't want to look at a new German Shepherd and be reminded of Bear). In any case we love our garbage dog and she loves us. 
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May 30, 2016 08:52
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