Jesus. So sorry to hear this, poor guy. Hope he got some good pain meds.
Post up Your pet pics, not Youtube
- Thread starter Th3 Maelstr0m
- Start date
Cool name(s)...lol
So if everything works out, my family is adopting this dog.
Her name is Honey, she's an 8 year old female German Shepherd who has been bounced around inside the system for a number of years. We're hoping to give her a forever-home. She's older, and completely deaf, which has been a problem for some of her previous owners. But she's spent the last year in obedience training at the place she's being fostered, and we watched a video of her going through her training. She's very responsive to hand signals and is apparently good with other animals and children.
Again assuming it works, my plan is to take her to work and class with me. The last time I was stationed here, the cadets begged me to bring my dog in. But I couldn't because she was in a wheelchair and there are a whole lot of stone steps to navigate. Assuming the dog is down with it, this time will be different.
Her name is Honey, she's an 8 year old female German Shepherd who has been bounced around inside the system for a number of years. We're hoping to give her a forever-home. She's older, and completely deaf, which has been a problem for some of her previous owners. But she's spent the last year in obedience training at the place she's being fostered, and we watched a video of her going through her training. She's very responsive to hand signals and is apparently good with other animals and children.
Again assuming it works, my plan is to take her to work and class with me. The last time I was stationed here, the cadets begged me to bring my dog in. But I couldn't because she was in a wheelchair and there are a whole lot of stone steps to navigate. Assuming the dog is down with it, this time will be different.
Kraut783
SOF Support
Please keep us updated, I hope so much this works out for you, Honey is beautiful!
@Marauder06 thats a beautiful dog and I hope it works out for you and the family.
policemedic
Verified SWAT
That’s awesome! It’s really cool you can bring her to work.
No more bouncing around for Honey. Best of luck to her and you.
So here are some pics of our little white devils. That’s Bebe in my lap. She is my Numero Uno dog. That’s Timmy with the tongue hanging out. Ella likes to bury herself with just her eyes and nose out. Then there’s Toby the runt.
Timmy has “shaky dog” syndrome. So he is always shaking and chomping at the air. Lol
Harley is out running the woods at the moment. We are just having a quiet night watching Game of Thrones.
I love my life.
Timmy has “shaky dog” syndrome. So he is always shaking and chomping at the air. Lol
Harley is out running the woods at the moment. We are just having a quiet night watching Game of Thrones.
I love my life.
It worked out brother!!! We got her on Saturday. Pics and details to follow.
Very happy for all of you.
If this is TL;DR for anyone, feel free to skip down to the pictures ;)
I'm very happy to report that we were able to adopt Heidi, a 6-year-old (not 8-year-old, as formerly reported) female German Shepherd.
According to the paperwork that came with her Heidi (formerly Honey, formerly Noshi, formerly something else) was found as a stray in Los Angeles. She ended up in New Hampshire, and then Georgia. Along the way she was spayed and developed a very bad double-ear infection. She was also adopted, and returned, at least twice. She spent a couple of months in a training center down in Georgia before she made her way up to us.
And oh yeah, all of this apparently happened in the last 7 months. So it's been a bit of a rough journey for her.
"But Charlie, why did you re-name her? Isn't she going to get confused?"
Well, a couple of things about that. First of all, "Honey" is the term of affection I use for my wife, and both of us use for our daughters. So yeah, that was going to get confusing quickly. We wanted a good, strong girl's name in German (since she's a German Shepherd) and thanks to a German friend's suggestion, we decided on Heidi.
Second, and more important, Heidi is probably completely deaf, so it makes no difference at all to her what we call her because she can't hear anyway. That ear infection caused her to lose her hearing. I'm not 100% sure it's a complete loss of hearing though, because she seemed to react when I clapped my hands loudly before dinner prayers last night. I guess we'll find out.
"Have you ever had a deaf dog before?"
Well, no, but we did have an adult male Great Pyrenees for 12 years, and that's pretty much the same thing
She had a rough first night with us due to some tummy issues, but she seems fine now. She was not at all worried about coming home with us, or coming into the house. It was pretty interesting because the first thing she did when we got her off the leash was to go and thoroughly sniff every room in the house. Rooms with doors that weren't immediately opened got checked out the first time she saw an opportunity. The back yard also got patrolled. And she spent a lot of time smelling around in the garage.
She can't hear the washing machine or the vacuum, so those things aren't scary. She watched the Roomba suspiciously but wasn't scared of it. But after it bumped into her for about the third time, she got annoyed and left the room.
She likes to go for walks. She is EXTREMELY food-motivated which helps in training. She absolutely loves her tennis balls. And her training shows: I've never had a dog walk so well on a leash.
Hand signaling a deaf dog is interesting. She knows sit, stay, down (although she doesn't like it), flip to heel, and heel. Some of those commands she does better than others. But it has to be the *exact* signal she was taught. Any variation, she's like "yeah bro, I've got nothin'." For example, a thumbs up signal with the left hand means sit. But apparently we have no idea what the same signal executed with the right hand means. Very interesting.
She does have some separation issues. For example, the first night we had her, I left Lilla and the girls in the living room and went to my office. She came over to where I was and whined until I went back into the living room with the rest of the family. If Lilla and I are in separate rooms, she spends a lot of time walking back and forth checking on us. It's herding behavior, I get it. She's indifferent to other animals at the dog park and while we're on walks, but she did display some aggression today when a Husky walked by our house, and when I was parked in the car waiting to pick up my daughter an a woman walked by with a black lab. So we'll work on that too. We'll also ask the vet about her ear infections and the hearing loss. It would be great if we could find a way to restore some of her hearing.
Overall assessment: she's a beautiful and loving dog that we're looking forward to making a permanent part of the family.
Attached to this post is her "Glamor Shots" photo from PetFinder, and in the comments are the pictures we took since she joined our family.
I'm very happy to report that we were able to adopt Heidi, a 6-year-old (not 8-year-old, as formerly reported) female German Shepherd.
According to the paperwork that came with her Heidi (formerly Honey, formerly Noshi, formerly something else) was found as a stray in Los Angeles. She ended up in New Hampshire, and then Georgia. Along the way she was spayed and developed a very bad double-ear infection. She was also adopted, and returned, at least twice. She spent a couple of months in a training center down in Georgia before she made her way up to us.
And oh yeah, all of this apparently happened in the last 7 months. So it's been a bit of a rough journey for her.
"But Charlie, why did you re-name her? Isn't she going to get confused?"
Well, a couple of things about that. First of all, "Honey" is the term of affection I use for my wife, and both of us use for our daughters. So yeah, that was going to get confusing quickly. We wanted a good, strong girl's name in German (since she's a German Shepherd) and thanks to a German friend's suggestion, we decided on Heidi.
Second, and more important, Heidi is probably completely deaf, so it makes no difference at all to her what we call her because she can't hear anyway. That ear infection caused her to lose her hearing. I'm not 100% sure it's a complete loss of hearing though, because she seemed to react when I clapped my hands loudly before dinner prayers last night. I guess we'll find out.
"Have you ever had a deaf dog before?"
Well, no, but we did have an adult male Great Pyrenees for 12 years, and that's pretty much the same thing
She had a rough first night with us due to some tummy issues, but she seems fine now. She was not at all worried about coming home with us, or coming into the house. It was pretty interesting because the first thing she did when we got her off the leash was to go and thoroughly sniff every room in the house. Rooms with doors that weren't immediately opened got checked out the first time she saw an opportunity. The back yard also got patrolled. And she spent a lot of time smelling around in the garage.
She can't hear the washing machine or the vacuum, so those things aren't scary. She watched the Roomba suspiciously but wasn't scared of it. But after it bumped into her for about the third time, she got annoyed and left the room.
She likes to go for walks. She is EXTREMELY food-motivated which helps in training. She absolutely loves her tennis balls. And her training shows: I've never had a dog walk so well on a leash.
Hand signaling a deaf dog is interesting. She knows sit, stay, down (although she doesn't like it), flip to heel, and heel. Some of those commands she does better than others. But it has to be the *exact* signal she was taught. Any variation, she's like "yeah bro, I've got nothin'." For example, a thumbs up signal with the left hand means sit. But apparently we have no idea what the same signal executed with the right hand means. Very interesting.
She does have some separation issues. For example, the first night we had her, I left Lilla and the girls in the living room and went to my office. She came over to where I was and whined until I went back into the living room with the rest of the family. If Lilla and I are in separate rooms, she spends a lot of time walking back and forth checking on us. It's herding behavior, I get it. She's indifferent to other animals at the dog park and while we're on walks, but she did display some aggression today when a Husky walked by our house, and when I was parked in the car waiting to pick up my daughter an a woman walked by with a black lab. So we'll work on that too. We'll also ask the vet about her ear infections and the hearing loss. It would be great if we could find a way to restore some of her hearing.
Overall assessment: she's a beautiful and loving dog that we're looking forward to making a permanent part of the family.
Attached to this post is her "Glamor Shots" photo from PetFinder, and in the comments are the pictures we took since she joined our family.
Attachments
Last one, promise. Here she is with my 5th Group Dietz print.
She really needs love, boss. Give her all you got. 
I'm happy for you...even happier for her.
I'm happy for you...even happier for her.
She's beautiful and sounds like is well along with training. Do you notice more of a male or female attachment, WRT to the herding behaviour? Our GSD/Lab has it but more so with the wife and daughter.
Not yet, we've only had her for a couple of days. I expect over time it will be more directed towards my wife, who is the one who feeds her and walks/trains her more than I will when work starts back up tomorrow.
We thought that would be the case here, as I'm home a lot and do all those thing's. But I guess she's bored of me. lol
We're not seriously looking yet, as it seems every dog in Canada is spoken for but we'll be looking for a new puppy soon. I'll be doing all the training. Then eventually a service dog for me.
Right now we have to get in front of her, or touch her to get her to look at us to see the signals. And already she pretends she doesn't see signals she doesn't like, lol.
There's also a vibrating collar we can get that sends a signal to her to let her know we want her to look at us. This is not a shock collar, it twitches the muscles in a way that's not painful.
There's also a vibrating collar we can get that sends a signal to her to let her know we want her to look at us. This is not a shock collar, it twitches the muscles in a way that's not painful.
