Meet baby Cisco........Future wilderness SAR partner - Page 2

Nice looking pup, awesome pedigree! Congratulations! Best of luck with him! jackie harris

HOPE CISCO IS EVERYTHING YOU WANT HIM TO BE!!! HE IS LOVELY AND LOOKS LIKE HE IS GOING TO BE A BIG BOY!!

Good looking puppy and very very nice pedigree!!...Good Luck!!

Congratulations ck29.  "Cisco" definately ring my bell too :)
May I ask how you went about in choosing your future SAR partner.  I am not an expert in bloodlines but I recognise afew dogs in his pedigree who were notoriously strong in bitework.  Does that inot mpinge on their offsprings for this instance, SAR?

I am only learning before anyone shoots me down.

Lovejags & Beetree, Thanks for the good wishes and compliments. :)

Hi Gustav,
Thank you for the compliments. I also want to thank you for all of the advice and knowledgeable information you have posted on the forum. It helped me tremendously in my search.

Hi Poseidon,
I am also not an expert on pedigrees but after asking a lot of questions, reading and talking to the breeder and some of the more experienced forum members it gave me a place to start. Also, since I was not able to travel all over the country and Europe to look at dogs, my only available method of evaluating potential trainability and degree of drive, was to look at pedigrees of dogs, who had a number of higher level tracking and SchH titles (both male and female) throughout their pedigrees. 

On the contrary. I believe that (as long as there aren't any serious hereditary negative temperament issues) having dogs, with strong bite work, in a SAR dogs pedigree is just another indication of the degree of drive. I also put more emphasis on the parents temperaments than dogs who are three and four generations back.
I was fortunate to be able to meet both of Cisco's parents and they have really nice temperaments.

After all of the research on health items, drives and temperament on the dogs in his pedigree, the puppy temperament test is administered to the litter determine which one of the puppies is best suited for SAR work.

Hope that Helps.

C

Thanks ck29 for taking the trouble to explain.  Lucky Cisco is going to enjoy the wilderness :)
One last question,  is there a  distinct trait or behaviour in selecting Cisco among his litter mates or were they all very similar due to the immediate parent's temperament.

Thanks.

Poseidon,
There were a couple in Cisco's litter with personalities that would not be ideally suited for SAR. The first was a little boy who was a sweet as could be, but he only wanted to be right beside me and showed little interest in the toy. He went to a pet home. The second was a little girl, a ball of fire who was the exact opposite, only wanted to be out exploring on her own, took the toy and never came back. Not sure what type of home she went to, but she is going to be a very independent handful. I wanted a boy so I did not test the other little girl and the other boy tested very similar to Cisco but was quite a bit bigger. I chose Cisco over the bigger boy because there was just something about his personality and look in his eyes that said pick me :)

Are you thinking about getting into SAR work?

ck29, its all interesting stuff to learn about what temperament and behaviours expected for different purpose whether it be schutzhund, SAR, PPD etc.  I wonder if a shutzhund prospective puppy can be just as good as a prospective SAR puppy.  I wonder if it is all to do with training.

I just noticed another thread on SAR evaluation on a new puppy.  So hopefully will get to read more contributions training wise for SAR with your prospective puppies :)