A plea from 4 month old Yogi, "Please don't forget about me"

Sandwiched in between all the excitement of the A litter and the B litter poor old Yogi has slipped under the radar and so I thought I would introduce him to you all. Realising that our 2 litters are  related  I decided to bring in a couple of male pups outside the breed program as potential future Police dogs and hopefully one day maybe a  future stud dog. The first was Grommit who you have met in a previous blogs and the other was Yogi who was born on the 24th of September 2013.

Yogi was bred by Dave Fermor a train driver on the cross channel tunnel who is also a dog trainer and breeds the occasional litter of German Shepherds at his home in Dover. The father of Yogi is a dog called Kummel who came 5th in this years World Schutzhund championships and is widely tipped to be a future world champion in the sport.

Kummel is owned and worked by Ronny van den Berghe who is probably the most successful handler ever in the sport of Schutzhund who lives and competes for Belgium.

For the uninitiated  Schutzhund is a dog sport assessment which started in Germany to assess the breed worth of their German Shepherds. The dogs are assessed for their courage, tracking ability, agility and obedience. The sport is now a worldwide sport and is accepted as the yardstick for the best dogs in the world.

Today I met up with Yogi and his puppy walker Terry Hodge to do some training and development training in Exeter. We started at the Police dog school where Yogi weighed in the scales at 19 kilo’s.

We then went up to the sports field to do some tracking training. Tracking is the following of a trail left by a person which the dog has to follow.

Pictured here is Yogi showing intense concentration with a low nose following the trail I have just left where I have hidden his toy on the end of the track. He really enjoys his tracking and easily located his toy.

From here it was down to the Police vehicle workshops to see how he coped with all the noisy vehicles, airbrakes, drills, tyre pressure noises and motorbikes.

He took all of this in his stride and here he is enjoying the view from one of the motorcycles.

From here it was off to Exeter city centre to see how he coped with busy city life.

He was soon the centre of attention and he is pictured here spending time with an elderly lady in her wheelchair who absolutely loved him and clearly made her day.

Next he met a Rottweiler retriever cross ( not a planned mating the owner told me) and what a lovely attitude as he invited the other dog to play.

He then caught the sound of a lady playing her Saxaphone ( and very good she was too)  and he is seen here enjoying the music and keeping an eye on her donations from the public.

I thoroughly enjoyed my morning with Yogi who impressed me with his very forward, confident and happy attitude to everything he came across. He was very sensible with all the dogs he met. I am confident he will make an excellent Police dog but whether he does or he doesn’t his excellent character makes him a joy to own and an excellent example of what good character should be in the German Shepherd.

Well done Yogi and well done to Dave his breeder.