"Tanka"

The pictures are amongst the first I ever shot with my E-1 when I got it in 2005.

Son of "Rolling Thunder" and "Kim's babe", I raised "Tanka", the name refers to a Lakota abreviation for "little wolf" and not to the japanese poetry form<grins>, a jetblack longhair german shepherd, since he was 8 weeks young. In the pictures he was two years, approaching 4 years now. His main stomping ground is the beach and he loves chasing frisbee and tracking. He prefers classical music, his favorite food is my freeshly cooked salmon and he can be quite a clown, I often think he can read my mind. We do not have fixed hours of training and walking, I do it daily but at various times, however, before I stand up to get ready, he knows it 20 seconds early before I even made the first move and gets excited. He is astonishingly strong and has a highly developed stamina, I once witnessed that he was able to catch up in a short 100-150 meter chase with a greyhound and nipped him in the butt after he stole his frisbee.

At one stage I had 14 shepherds when I lived in Belgium, I am very fond of that breed and their character, having said that, there are many cowboys out there and you can get a not so healthy and somewhat poorly breed dog easily.

I spend 4 days long and many hours together with the parents and the litter before I made my choice, and on the last afternoon I knew it was him.

The pubs were playing in the gras and Tanka was sitting away from them observing their play with a distinct facial espression of "ts ts ts... kiddos!" and just watched it from the distance.

Then he stood up, stretched himself and ignoring his sisters and borthers game, went straight to his sleeping father to nip him in the tail, earned the deepest growl as a result, but did not stop until he got his full attention and a game.





The nex pics are just snapshots and sadly not to my standards of today, but I just can not delete them and show them anyways. The E-1's continuous shooting modre is not amongst the fastest and I am not good at that. He has a great sense of balance, hehehehe, trying to stop at full speed while catching lead to this ballett like scene, I just whish this would be a technically perfect picture.

Thats a beautiful dog and nice pictures of him. I have always really liked the breed. Judging by the ones we had they are as loyal as it gets.

The last one that we had was a monster in size. 96 pounds at 9 months growing to 130 pounds and beautiful. I would have liked to show him but was told he was oversize for the breed.

The reason that I didn't get another was that while he was an absolute gentelman when I was around. My wife or daughter had their hands full when I wasn't. When I wasn't home, for some reason he felt he had to protect them. The vet even told my wife that only I could bring him to the office. When I took him he followed every command to the letter. People would play with him and comment what a wonderful, beautiful dog. For a while I thought my wife was exaggerating until the vet told me she didn't dare go near him without me. I never saw that side of him. He would play with kids all day if they would through a ball. I sure miss him.

Sorry to hear that Ron.

The last shepherd I had was a giant as well, he reached the immense age of 17,5 years before I had to make a tough decision. My vet was always fond of him and she explained early to me that it is particulary the nutrition and of course the exercise which keeps them healthy. The first year of a pubs life I used to cook their food fresh every day, mostly stuff like cattle heart, brown rice, carrotts, broccoli, and loads of fish. Geeze, what a fulltime job, 4 meals a day, and so on. <smiles>

I am a strong supporter towards the idea of a dog handlers license when it comes to certain breeds. I think people should proof that they have the knowledge needed, and the means to enable such dogs a happy and healthy life, too often I witnessed cirumstances that were somewhat disturbing, and I still see this happening. I also think pet insurance should be mandantory and not an option. Ireland is particulary bad with dogs, in 2005 more than 25.000 dogs were put down.

I would have liked to show him but was told he was oversize for the breed.

Click to expand...

You don't wanna hear what I think of such organisations. <grins>

I did a lot of research on their nutrition and the usual stuff availabe, the results where shocking, particulary the bigger names in the business have production methods and use ingrediences that literally make the dogs sick over a longer period, skin disease, cancer, all sorts of BS that in my humble vuiew can be directly related to this. Argh.... don't get me started. Procter and Gamble (IAMS) to name the worst is only the start of a long list.

Luckily I found an irish vet here who saw this the same way, and he started to develop and produce his own food.

Georg, I really like animal pictures that seem less contaminated by our stuff.

So the first picture I go for but the ones with the plastic rings disturb me. Maybe it's my issue with natural materials. If the ring was made of rope or woood then it would seems natural, although both are man-made!

I wonder if anyone else is troubled by the fluorescant colored plastics in pictures of animals?

Asher

Hi Georg,

17 plus years is a good age for a gsd. I think the average is about 12 years. I agree about the food. A local agricultural animal feed supplier has always given a full declaration of their feed contents, and recently a few of the larger manufacturers - e.g. spiller's - have been giving some details. wrt dog food, there are a number of colour enhancers, etc., in most of the bought stuff, which effect the animals temperament, but you know all that.

Our gsd's just loved the sea, not the beach, straight into the water. They have all been 'second hand', the previous owner's having to get rid of them for one reason or another. They are a one person dog, or at least a one sex dog - they either like men or women, rarely both, in my experience., or at least the bitches seem to be that way. They never grow up.

Best wishes,
Ray

Hi Asher,

I tend to agree with you re the 'artificial coloured rings', from an aesthetic/artistic viewpoint, but wood is far from ideal as a dog toy. For the beach, Georg's toy is ideal, but maybe a canvas dummy, or a 'bumper' would look more natural ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray