Strange Fear - Page 3

Jesse watching a number of GSDs in herding(including my own) I came to the conclusion that many GSDs are a mixture of nearsightedness and extreme farsisghtness. Its the area in the middle that appears blury to them. For example at a herding clinic watching my dog he could see sheep a mile away up on a ridge but not 200 ft away. You often saw GSDs do what we call a key hole outrun. Instead of the nice pear shape you see with border collies our guys would run straight out on the line we sent them ( on faith I believe because it previously was done closer in and offered the rewarding behavior of stock work which they live for) and then all of a sudden it was like whoa! there they are and the dog would start to bend and open the keyhole to come in behind them.

BTW I've also seen borders fixate on a stack of hay they were convinced were sheep. I use to joke when told to get a "real herding dog" (ie border) I would say yes but I want one who will look up and see the wolf standing behind the flock and be willing to do something about it.

I can't remember who asked(I read it last night), but he's just barely 1 year old.

Tig, yes, the limited experience I have with Mali is that they are fearless and will go over anything and every thing...without having to be trained to do it like the majority of gsd seen these days. Ellis may have had some gsd for sale and didn't want the Mali to upstage them....there is usually an ulterior motive when gsd trainers are involved.

So, yah, the op has had bad results with gsd, so a different breed that doesn't need to be tutored as to the normal things in the world, might give him some insight.

 

Edit to add: bet if you went to an Ivan Balabanov seminar, you would hear the converse of what Ellis told you. 

I've never had nerve issues in any of my dogs like that, ever. I would be very interested to know which bloodlines are involved. Only time I see these things is with poorly bred dogs. Now I've had a couple dogs that I took in, that were actually well bred and one of them was suuuuper spooky and the other one downright fear aggressive.

That being said, right around one year of age up until they are about 18 months old, they can be in a weird phase, where they act reactive towards people, dogs, or sometimes even spooky towards things they've walked by a million times.

Bf, you know about the weak nerves in the showlines, and unfortunately, some of the WL gsd which have been selected for sport, where the environmental soundness is overlooked in selection process, unsoundness has crept into some of the highly specialized ' point ' selected dogs.

Sure, I know that. I just personally haven't had that in any of my own dogs and wouldn't want it either. I noticed that the pups out of Sharon had more pronounced fear phases but turned out to be really solid dogs. However, the one dog that was environmentally super unsound I sent back and the other one that was fear aggressive was put to sleep. I've seen certain linebreedings produce environmental issues but those weren't my dogs.

That being said, the new test in Germany seems to be pretty tough and it tests for temperament and strong nerve. So hopefully things will change a little.

Do you have a link for the new test? Be interested in seeing it.
Thanks

I am wondering about something. There have been various times during the "allergy season" in which this dog has had some rather, runny/mucous areas in the corners of his eyes especially; And it could get pretty thick; I'd find myself each morning (It tends to be worse more so in the a.m . after getting up) getting it out of the corners of his eyes, and sometimes (not always) there is quite a bit. Could this have any relation to possible sight problems? I imagine it could not help things. I don't know with an animal, but I know a number of our issues as humans often come from inflammation, so it just made me wonder if there might be any connections there. We will be getting it checked out soon.