Is titling / breed surveying a GSD really useless? - Page 2

OT but here are my observations of the SD industry.

SD was definetly a symbol of the highest level of dog training. In fact the first labradoodle was a legitimate controlled experiment in creating a superior SD.

No regular person could just buy a SD, they were in the tens of thousands of dollars. People in need were put on long lists and large, wealthy charity orgs gifted them to people along with physiotherapist (and other relevant medical support) courses and a lengthy training course with a top level professional trainer.

Fast forward to 2017 and the SD industry has become the most low level bottom feeding scam in all of dogdom.

My crappy backwoods area produces hundreds of service dogs with crappy certificates every year, straight from the puppy mill. Buy on the internet.

Lol the original labradoodle experiment is now a shameful laughing stock and icon of the designer mutt world.

Once the ppd crowd was synonymous with scam, it has been surpassed only by the SD industry as the lowest form of scam to people in need.

Actually it would be difficult to split the post 9/11 SAR industry and SD industry as the lowest.

Shame because they are both good things when absent all the pollution and corruption.

Exactly why I said, he's a real SD. I absolutely agree with you. He is not just a dog that has a crappy certificate. There is no certificate. He's actually legitimately trained and worked as a SD. He's got real and solid task training and one of his sons is actually in training as a serious seizure alert/response dog. He started alerting at 5 months of age.

Serious SD work has a very high washout rate. A seriously high one and it drives me nuts when we get people that just pick up a 5 year old dog reactive dog from the shelter and say "He's my service dog" after they had him for a week. (happens all the time).

We work a lot with the local vet community and hold very high standards when it comes to SD work. I have no issues telling someone to wash hteir dog or that they don't qualify for a dog. We do a lot of SD advocacy and Athos has also visited an elementary school to show off his skills.

The type of work he does is mentally taxing. It wears on a dog. Hopefully, after I had my surgery (I need a few surgeries), I can fully retire him and get back to titling. But for now, the only reason why I can actually function on my own while my husband is deployed, is because he's picking up the slack around the house. I've got a couple of his training videos up but those are from when he was younger. I was once run over by a car and in a wheelchair for a year. After that, I've always had a slight limb with my right leg and it increased with physical activity. Now, it's at the point where I have serious issues and can't walk for five minutes. It's vicious cycle. No exercise, a medical syndrome plus my hip is shot badly. I can barely walk without crutches and rely a lot on Athos when it comes to balancing. I can't walk down the stairs forward without him. If I don't have him, I have to turn around and walk them down backwards. I can hardly pick up items by myself and his most important task next to counter balance is picking up my crutches.

https://vimeo.com/156818477

https://vimeo.com/152766149

He had 2 years of SD training. Without him, I could not get through my husbands deployment by myself, not with my disability. So this dog... I honestly wouldn't know what to do without him. And this is why I wouldn't want a dog that can't be touched or be approached. He needs to be approachable. Especially when I'm in the hospital, and that's fairly often. This dog is my lifeline.

I think vk paints a very bleak picture. Cannot speak about any countries 'Service Dog' picture than my own, but here in the UK the situation is STILL:

- a notall-that-well-off charity, not Government funded, most money raised from the public by donation/subscription, obtains or breeds dogs and takes them through the (yes, pretty expensive) Training needed to render them useful to the particular group of people / needs, well over and above the function of 'pet'. If dogs 'fail' that training other uses are found for whatever talents / extra behaviours they CAN do, or failing that they are retired as pets. A small majority of dogs meet Training targets and are placed.

= times: Guides for the Blind, Hearing dogs, dogs for war veterans, other services personnel, dogs for the disabled, dogs that warn of epilepsy ... there were at least 20 organisations training dogs for specific purposes last time I looked at a list, all operating on the same basis described above ^^.

Some of these are deliberately kept pure-bred, others are deliberate crosses that have been found to work well in the circumstances required; others still are out&out mongrels, some rescued from the streets, but chosen on things like size/weight, things that can be important if you are confined to a wheelchair, or growth-restricted, or whatever. If any of this set of charities is deliberately cross-breeding, they are generally up front about it (they don't just have 'ooopps' moments where their husky impregnates their GSD and then tell lies about it, for example).

People with any kind of SD here insofar as I am aware do not tell porkies about that, to get themselves perks or to get their dogs on planes; people here with SDs can usually prove very easily by various documentation etc that their dog is a specially trained member of an elite sort. Knowing the officiousness of the average British bureaucrat, they no doubt have to produce this quite often ! But I suppose the plus side is that if some taxi-driver or something demonstrates prejudice, they soon find themselves hauled before a Court.

I have regular contact with one Labradoodle, who is (and I believe was only ever intended as) 'just a pet', but he really is a fabuously 'nice' dog to handle, so the cross has not been entirely ruined by the greeders.

The guy who started the Labradoodle thing did it for a valid purpose and disowned it when the money-grabbing Designer Crossbreed thing took off on the 'doodles coat tails. Who is to say that fad would not soon have come along anyway ?

We still have top level SD training, the downside is everybody and anybody can claim to be breeding, selling and training them. Laws change with location but often a shopkeeper can not ask about SD credentials or the disability if the handler because they may face legal action or just get slaughtered on social media which is never good for retail business.

The main media love running stories on the evil shopkeeper harassing the poor old disabled lady with her SD because she just wanted a cup of coffee, long slow camera pans, dramatic music etc and that business is done.

This gives dodgy SD people impunity to be questioned.

The easy buck they make is at the expense of the real deal folks. The dodgy people discredit proper credentials as corrupt elites, same old story with any anti-title crowd.

Nowadays just being fat & lazy or saying you get anxiety is a legitimate disability that does get you perks and good parking spots.

 

If I could just lose my morals I could cash in so many ways with SAR, disability, therapy......dogs etc.

Honestly, it's a mess. It's a real mess and the Therapists prescribing them are not helping at all. They prescribe dogs like candy and terminology isn't helping either. The system needs to be changed.

Emotional Support Dogs (I mean really? COME ON!) because so many places ban dogs, it was necessary to implement Emotional Support Dogs. I believe the US is the ONLY country that actually has Emotional Support Animals. And these dogs are consistently mistaken as Service Dogs or passed off as Service Dogs.

As for Service Dogs, it's a mess as well. Just buy a vest and pass them off. In Walmart, the staff is not allowed to question you because they fear law suits, so you can walk in with any dog, trained or not, and they can't say a word.

I was lucky, very very lucky that my male has what it takes to be a true SD but I was at a point once where I thought I had to wash him and I would have done so. He went through a reactive phase where I truly thought "That's it." But luckily he came out of it and in my State owner training is allowed so long you are a professional or work with a professional.

Anyhow, that's why I'm not too much worried about titles. They are proving themselves otherwise and I have documentation. He's even exempt from paying dog license fee since I have documentation.

Honestly BE I see no difference in what you say and what dodgy scammers say.

Its all exactly the same words, thoughts and sentences. Not one bit of difference.

That's why I trust only the old proven rigorously credentialed and titled operators acting under public scrutiny and not the ones inventing their own standards at home with their own dog like you are.

Susie wrote::

All those untitled dogs are advertised as "son/daughter" - or even better - "grandson/granddaughter" of the famous titled champions xyz, but after 2 generations the breeders need "fresh working blood" from titled European breeding stock. Weird, isn´t it?

Reply

isnt that the exact same situation in Titled dogs and the very reason things are the way they are, the "fame"behind the dog is more important than the dog itself, both in breedingchoices and in selling pups
 

Duke how famous you think the average bsp champion is to 99.99999999999999999999999999% of people on earth?

Lemme answer - not much.

Dunno why you keep pushing this "fame" thing.

 

More people go to my local beer festival than people at the last WUSV.

 

You sound bitter.

just a system I have seen in action for about 30 years, even know "breeders" that euthanise their stock that is out of fashion, and plenty kennels "replace "their expensive stud dog they imported as soon as puppy sales go down and get a new famous dog in

even real good dogs are harder to sell once their "lines"are out of fashion, so bitter no, realistic yes

Example ;;years ago we had people on this forum proudly posting about their Eros and Como pups and breedingstock, so who do we hear about that today and who still breeds those lines, it is just how it is

A bit of business involved, if someone invested in Eros or Como they naturally gonna be promoting Eros and Como.

Thing I learned in my shorter time in the breed is most kennels don't last long.

I couldn't count all the people buy their first gsd and start a kennel, website hit up the forums. They promote their dogs ped because its all they know. They prolly bought the dog off someone who is exactly like themselves.

They give entire litters to the police hoping they keep one, advertise in classifieds, end up with one or two pups they can't place, get vet bills, get scrutiny from buyers and realise it was not the easy money they thought they could bank on by waving a pedigree around.....and then they dissapear.

 

Seen it a lot, I checked in during the Bomber V craze, who hears about all those pups now??

 

I still got the same old dog I started with, 100+ cat scalps, paid crowd controller, field proven handler defense dog....never bred a pup or bothered to pay $30 to register the idiot to get a pedigree paper.

 

Been a hoot actually.

 

Fukin jihadist mofo.

 

Duke you should beg me for a semen straw to wake yr line up, they getting too domestic.