Dog Community

why you choose the breed or dog you have...

Posted : 8/9/2006 7:50:24 AM

Howdy folks!

I was running on and on in another thread when I started to wonder just what made ya#%92ll decide to get the breed or the dog you got? If this is a repeat thread I am sorry ahead of time.

For me owning a wolf, or wolf/dog has been a life long dream of mine. I cannot recall a time in my life where I wasn#%92t obsessed with wolves. To this day I never tire of reading about them, for fiction I love werewolf stories but I despise the ones that depict them as ‘bad guys.#%92 LOL always have prolly always will.

Like I said I have always been obsessed with wolves, as a child I would fill my pockets with dog food and raw hot dogs, stole my mothers game hens, the dead ones of course, on more than one occasion, I would get up earlier than everyone else so I could get my farming chores done before the sun ever crested the top of the hills, then off I would go!

I would roam the woods that surrounded us looking for tracks of wolves or wild dogs even, any kind of wild needed fed type animal was full game for me! My dad, well my step dad, he became more ‘dad#%92 to me than my real dad as he is the one who raised me, anyhow, my dad taught me to shoot and gun safety at a young age so on my treks I generally had a 12 gauge shot gun with me but I never used it, I was to shoot it in the air two times if I ever needed help, I told ya#%92ll that so you know I was actually really safe….

Anyhow I was a pretty good tracker, I would look for signs of wild dogs, or wolves and I found a few packs of them too! I kinda adopted them, rather they put up with the stupid human child that brought them food and LOTS of it! What I found I now believe were packs of coyotes, my poor mother, no wonder she has gray hair!

I spend countless hours and days and weeks following these ‘wolves.#%92 ((like I said they couldn#%92t have been wolves, we have no wolves in the wild around these parts.)) I fed them, always trying to get closer, always always hoping for the chance to steel a pup and take home as my very own wolf, who I would name Fang and he would love me and I would raise him to be my best friend and love him FOREVER! ahhh the ignorance of youth…

That said I have been in love with wolves from the time I could first remember seeing a dog.

Soooo as an adult the next natural step was to get a wolf hybrid, enter SASHA!!!

I am sooo in love with Sasha that I often forget that not everyone adores her like I do. She is mama#%92s special angel, and buddy believe me she KNOWS it! No one is allowed to discipline her but me, no one is allowed to take her for walks but ME, I am VERY overprotective of her, I am fearful that the kids would not take as much care with her as I would and hence she may get away from them, get run over by a car and I would just DIE!

Sasha is my darling baby, and heaven help the fool who ever hurt her!

Sooo that#%92s why I chose to become the proud mama of a wolf/dog.

The other two dogs in our family came to us by chance, so we didn#%92t really pick them we kinda got picked BY them. I love Chubby and Heidi, but well they are more the kids dogs, Sasha is my special baby.

Ok gonna stop here, I could go on for days and days, pages and pages about my baby Sasha, like I said I kinda forget not everyone is as in love with her as I am.

Sooo why did you all choose the breed or doggy you have?

willowchow

Posted : 8/9/2006 7:56:34 AM

I'm sorry Siara. . .the thought of a child running around at the break of dawn looking for "wolves" with dead hens and a shot gun. . .are you for real.

Wolves and wolf hydrids are not pets, sorry.

I got my dog after my husband met the original owners who were going to have her euthanized for aggression.

Siana

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:21:52 AM

I grew up in the woods, quite literally. Both my mother and my dad grew up in the woods, they had to work hard and both often knew the value of shooting true or go hungry, they were quite honestly and the very literate sense of the words dirt poor.

To them farming was natural, having nothing but woods around them was natural, my mother did have a job outside the home, she was and still is a school bus driver. My dad taught me and my sister to shoot and hunt geeze I cant even remember how young we were, I do remember him saying I couldn#%92t use the gun without him until I could bark a squirrel, anyone who has ever tried to shoot a squirrel knows those buggers are harder than heck to hit! Not to mention if you actually shot one there wouldn#%92t be much left, that#%92s why you bark them, you track its movements then hit the tree bark with the bullet right where you think its gonna go, the bark hits the squirrel and either stuns it out of the tree or kills it. I was pretty proud of my ability to do this, still am actually.

Growing up this way isn#%92t odd, a lot of people still raise their kids on farms in the woods teach them to hunt and shoot at young ages, in fact at my school we, meaning all the kids at this school in general, were called red necks, cow punchers and all sorts of names meaning stupid farm kids. My high school even excused hunting season as excused absences. School started in the fall but a lot of us farming kids were allowed to miss due to harvest. Don#%92t believe me, oh well.

What's the big deal anyhow? For me it#%92s normal. What is odd to me is my step kids have never had a baby calf suck their thumb, they didn#%92t know what biscuits and gravy were, they had never SEEN ANYONE make a biscuit from scratch, they freaked out when I took them to my moms and said lets go for a hike! I grabbed my old 12 gage and put on my hiking boots and off my children and I went, the step kids chose not to go. WEIRD!!!

Even though I now live in town, I still cant grasp things like locking the doors all the time, having to wait for hunting season to come around in order to hunt, city life still puzzles me even though as an adult I have lived in town pretty regularly. I live for the moments where I can go to moms and relax with the woods all around me and well its home.

I wish I could get my husband to leave the city but he wont. He is a city boy, born and bred so I am doing my best to make our home look and feel like its in the country. My oldest stepdaughter often says our home is starting to look like a farmhouse. Heehee that#%92s the goal!

Honestly you cant tell me that I am the ONLY one here who was taught to shoot and loved the woods. Am I?

Anyhow back to the pooches!

willowchow

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:29:48 AM

What's the point of shooting at squirrels?? I just don't get how people say they love animals and yet run around killing them. Don't make much sense, does it??

And, regardless of whether you lived in the woods or not, or was taught to shoot or not. . . a kid with a gun isn't a good thing.

k.m.a

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:30:42 AM

I'm with willowchow on the story.. Sounds very un-realistic and doubtful.

Anyways, the reason I've chosen newfies *even if I dont have one yet* is because they're gorgeous, giant (my favourite type of dog) and they have a lovely personality..

Benedict

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:38:33 AM

I am sure Lori will correct me if I have misunderstood her, but I think she was commenting more on the fact that as a child you went out looking for wolves, not just the manner in which you did it. Although people raised in cities (myself included) may have a difficult time understanding the ins and outs of country life (and vice versa) I don't think the country way of life in itself was being criticized.

You say that "the next natural step was to get a wolf hybrid"....I dispute that there is ANYTHING natural about this. There is a difference between all dogs being descended from wolves and having a wolf (or hybrid) as a dog. You may have been lucky and she may be a good pet for you, but she is not what I would term a "dog".

FWIW, what I have written above may be related to why I disagree with your training methods. Having a gun as a child, owning a wolf hybrid and performing alpha rolls on said hybrid all seem completely natural to you. NONE of those things are natural to me, so I find myself having a very difficult time relating to your posts. Even if alpha rolls are the best way to correct Sasha, they are not the best way to train a DOG.....so I don't think they should be offered as advice. The difference is night and day.

To answer your question, I got a Labrador because they a) fit in well with my lifestyle, and b) they are my fiance's favourite breed. Given that he had never owned a dog before and I had, I decided he would have choice of breed.

Kate

Firestorm

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:51:51 AM

ORIGINAL: willowchow

And, regardless of whether you lived in the woods or not, or was taught to shoot or not. . . a kid with a gun isn't a good thing.

Sorry this is a bit off topic but....
If properly educated in gun safety I do not see the problem with a kid having a gun. Look back in history and there were 7 year olds who knew how to shoot guns. You have heard mor kids nowadays with shooting accidents or purposely because of no education as how to respect and properly use a gun.

How is hunting a bad thing if you eat the meat? Tell me how hunting is so terrible? Would it be better to be over run with wild animals and diseases from them or them dying from diseases?

Firestorm

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:53:48 AM

Both my dogs were given to me. So I didn't pick them out although I could have refused to take them...Rott who is at rainbow bridge and my Shih Tzu. I love both breeds but for different reasons.

Firestorm

Posted : 8/9/2006 8:59:29 AM

Benedict, provided the OP is not being abusive...but I guess that would be a matter of what your idea of abuse is....what works for them works for them. We are here to share our experiences and opinions. It seems as though you may think the OP is on some kind of power issue or something to the effect of that. If OP can have a well behaved WH what does it matter.
I say to each his own provided no one is getting hurt on either side.

Benedict

Posted : 8/9/2006 9:05:36 AM

I'm sorry if I was misunderstood. I don't think the OP is being abusive. However, while she may have a well behaved WH as a result of her training methods and no one is getting hurt, I DO believe that those same training methods would lead to injury if practised by an average person on an average dog. In short, I disagree that a WH is a dog.

Kate

Firestorm

Posted : 8/9/2006 9:17:42 AM

Fair enough. It isn't a dog. With each dog you need to find out what training methods work. You need to be careful when doing the whole alpha thing. I correct my Shih Tzu differently then the Rott I had. Their personalities and traits are different therefore slightly different methods...non abusive but the firmness and tone of voice. The Rott needed a lil louder and harsher sounding voice then the Shih Tzu.
I can see your points also thanks for clarification.

glenmar

Posted : 8/9/2006 9:53:00 AM

Isn't Heidi the dog who saved your life? And she's more the kids dog??

I grew up in the city, yes, but Dad grew up on a farm and we had a cottage on the farm and my fondest memories are of time spent on the farm. Up before dawn and out riding the horse that I trained and gentled myself. I grew up hunting with my Dad and I was a darned good shot, but I was NEVER allowed to go out along with a rifle. Self protection was to dig my heels in and get my horse to run like the wind from anything scarey, like wolves or fox or the occassional bear. Despite my skill with a gun, Dad had some pretty valid concerns about a child shooting in fear and just enraging the menancing animal.

Growing up, Dad had bird dogs, and there always seemed to be a cocker or two around. When I was three, Candy followed Dad across the street and was struck and killed by a car. For years I wanted a golden cocker just like Candy. I was in my 30's before I actually owned one, and he became my heart dog. As our cockers aged and began going to the Bridge, I thought it only fair to let DH have his childhood fantasy dog, so we started with the german shepherds. Shadow is the accidental product of Thor and Sheba, and the rest of the crew are fosters that didn't quite make it to another home.......I knew in my heart that no other cocker would ever measure up to Rusty, nor should they have to, but I knew that there would always be a little tiny part of me comparing and I didn't think that would be fair to the dog, so the new breed it was.

rredbird

Posted : 8/9/2006 10:05:21 AM

Maybe some day I will get to pick the breed of dog I own but up till now they have all picked me [

]. Mostly mutts [

].

Siana

Posted : 8/9/2006 11:07:46 AM

Heidi started out as MY dog, I needed a hearing dog, a puppy showed up in our back yard, no one answered our found add soooo we kept her!

I trained Heidi myself, never have I allowed ANYONE to hit her. I took Heidi to pet smart for obedience training, found out, and was told by the trainer she knew by far more than they could ever teach her, therefore she wound up being the dog used to demonstrate this is how YOUR dog should do this ect…

Heidi became more Goldie's dog than mine after I had my CI for about a year. Goldie is my 15 year old daughter. Heidi prefers and actually has always preferred to sleep with Goldie and spend most of her time with Goldie.

Heidi is still protective of us, last night for instance my husband woke up, I was in the kitchen getting a drink, he was half awake stumbled into me stubbing my toe, I let out a squeal, grabbed him going ohhhh MAN! My TOE! Heidi jumped up snapped at Jeff, she thought he really hurt me, I told her down and no, she stopped but her hair was all up and she didn't look too happy about mama in pain. Eh, I was fine he just jammed my little size 5 foot with his great big huge size 13 and a half foot!

Chubby is really hubbys dog, but has kinda been taken over by my stepdaughter Aubrey, he just loves her bed full of stuffed animals. LOL!

Sasha though, ahhh my sweet Sasha, she is ALL MINE!

I agree that Sasha isn't a 'pet.' She is more like a child than any dog I have ever had, she behaves more like one as well. She looks you right in the eye, she doesn't mean anything by it, her eyes are void of challenge, just seems to be looking right at your soul, other times its as though she is speaking to you. I know I'm fruity when it comes to Sasha, can't help it; she's my BABY!

I love talking to her, she looks right in your eyes and cocks her head, if you need it she will move in and give you what I call a Sasha hug. Then give you a nice great big lick or ten, snuggle one more time, look into your eyes making sure all is well then say lets go play mama! She's just a great big furry angel.

willowchow

Posted : 8/9/2006 11:19:10 AM

properly educated in gun safety I do not see the problem with a kid having a gun.

No child should be running around in the woods with a gun, I don't care if anyone disagrees. That is extremely dangerous.

As for hunting, the OP clearly stated she had the gun with her as a child to shoot twice if she got into trouble. So, someone would come to help her. Then she stated she was proud that she could bark a squirrel. She may have hunted with her step dad but she was also doing things she shouldn't of been. Sorry, my dad hunted too as well as other family members. We even had three beagles and a German Shorthaired Pointer. My grandfather had a farm and numerous animals. I still was not allowed to carry a gun as kid nor was I allowed to go off first thing in the morning alone.

If anyone thinks this is OK, well that's your issue. It's not.