It seems that my life for the last 15 years has been mostly about dogs. Before that I guess I had a family and when that fell apart I latched on to the next best thing (possibly a much better thing). When my wife first got pregnant with my first son, I said to her “you’re going to have a baby, I’m going to get a puppy”. So we went out and bought Leah from a backyard breeder up near the Canada border. We weren’t really very knowledgeable about German shepherds. Before this I had Golden Retrievers and had done some training in upland bird and waterfowl retrieving. But my golden retriever puppy was absconded with on Easter Sunday. So I figured I’d get a dog that was a little less likely to just go with somebody, or that somebody would just approach to try to steal. So the German Shepherd immediately came to mind as a great family dog and a pretty good protector.

Leah was a phenomenally great dog. At roughly a year old when my son was finally born. She was so attached to the baby that you would’ve thought it was hers. Now the interesting thing about

my son and Leah is that neither of them ever made a sound.  Kyle never cried, Leah never barked.  Well, an occasional whimper maybe. Until one day when the baby was in his bassinet near a window so we could hear him while we were working out in the yard and grandma was fussing around the kitchen (and watching the baby). Suddenly the baby screamed out in an amazingly spine rattling scream! We all ran to the baby, but Leah was there barking and snarling, not letting anybody near it, trying to protect it from whatever was causing it to scream and cry. But I got in and checked the baby and he had been stung by a large Hornet. Poor little guy! A little baking soda and water took care of the sting.  And after that Leah got even more protective of the baby. So Leah and Kyle grew up for the next 2yrs together, though I do not believe Kyle was not as infatuated with Leah as she was of him. She still recognized me as the head of the pack, but she always kept track of him. When we had my 2nd son, Bradley, she was a bit split about who she needed to take care of the most. And since Kyle at that time was 2 1/2 and pretty independent she settled back to just being protector of the household. We put her through the regular obedience training and tracking, but the protection training showed her as very “defensive”, and not acting like she was having fun. So we broke off the protection training, and concentrated on tracking and joined a search and rescue team in the Adirondacks, which she loved. But that’s a whole other story.

I got divorced about the time Kyle was 13, so Leah was almost 14 years old. Though there was a joint custody agreement, the kids and I came to the agreement that if they were going to live with me they had to do more than watch video games and eat. They had to clean up their messes, make their beds, keep their bathrooms clean, and do their laundry. All of these things were the way it was before the divorce. But in reality,  it is a major inconvenience to have 2 homes that your friends can never find you at (before cell phones), and in which the rules are significantly different at each one. So they decided to stay with their mother except on some weekends, or when we were doing something special. And at the time I was working from 7 AM until 5 PM, and at 14yrs old Leah could no longer hold it for that many hours in the house. She had always been an indoor dog, and we lived in upstate New York where the weather outside in the winter was no place for an older dog. A year before my divorce my wife had re-carpeted the entire downstairs of my house with beige carpeting. Very expensive beige carpeting. However, 6 hours of soaking in dog mess still stains even very expensive carpeting. So she was slowly destroying my house and looking very upset every time I came home. She knew better, and I would get upset, so it was no use putting off the inevitable for any longer. So she was the first of my pack to go to the rainbow bridge. I’m not sure if it was just all the stuff  happening in my life at the time, the divorce, the kids, losing my dad, and being broke as a church mouse from child support. But I was a mental wreck for more than 2 weeks. And the worse part is, that when she was 2 years old we had her x-rayed for hips in preparation of possibly breeding her and she was “certified”as already having advanced dysplasia. In the week before I put her down we played Frisbee in the yard and she would still run out and jump up in the air and catch that Frisbee. She could still jump in and out of the car without any trouble. So 12 years later her dysplasia diagnosis never came true.  She was physically as healthy as every.  So except for being incontinent, she was still an exceptional dog. There will never be a better family dog.

So I was without a dog for over  a year. And then my younger son, Bradley, decided he couldn’t stand living with his mother and moved back in with me. ((I totally understand!))  But one day, as 12-year-old boys do, he suggested we get a puppy! We were going on a bike ride, and I said I believe I know where there are puppies out near the bike ride, so we stopped to look. Very bad idea. Nobody ever just stops to look at puppies. Especially with a child with them. So there were 2 males and 3 females and we wanted a male. One was quite gregarious and playful and the other was kind of reserved and watchful. So he chose the gregarious and playful one and the breeder said “that’s going to be my show dog and I plan on taking him all the way to a championship. I would want $1500 for him and still co-own him for dog shows”. I said “I only have $600 and I’m not wasting my time on dog shows”. So we ended up taking Dakota home, the quiet and watchful one. Bradley sat in the back of the car with him while we drove home and he laid in Bradley’s lap. When I opened the back to let Bradley and the puppy out, Bradley was covered in a large lake of drool! Otherwise, Dakota’s first car ride was uneventful.

Dakota’s personality continued to be the “quiet and watchful” kind. I started calling him Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh, because he always looked so sad and troubled. It took a special day to get them excited to play, though he was a great obedient dog and took to the training fine, and did excellent in tracking. I didn’t think any dog could do better than Leah as a tracker, but Dakota could track a 3 day old track after rain. And I’m not sure if that’s because he just knew where people were going to head, or he really could smell scent. But like Leah, Dakota was an American bread German Shepherd for AKC beauty pageants. And so had very little drive to do protection work. He very rarely chased any squirrels or birds or any other creatures. He was more interested in carefully playing with them then getting after them. But as easy as he was to train, he was also always into mischief. He would cruise the counters and tables throughout the house and take down stuff and just eat it or chew it into dust. When he was 18 months old I came home and found a bottle of “No-Doz” chewed up on the floor. He was “wired”beyond belief and it’s the only time I’ve ever seen him so incredibly active and crazy. He must have eaten 2200 mg of caffeine. Another time he ate an entire jar of Vaseline. Amazingly, most of that ended up around the yard. But I would routinely come home and find garbage dragged through the house from one end to the other. One day when my mother was watching him and she had gone out for a short while, when she came home she found that he had gotten a neck pillow that was full of walnut hulls and ripped it open and shook it all over the house. At first we thought it was coffee, but was so glad it was walnut hulls as it was easily vacuumed up. But we continued to find them in the cushions of the couch and chairs and behind pictures on the wall for months. He must of had so much fun that day.

But I was doing a lot of training with a group that included protection training, and so I really wanted to get a dog that was bred with the drive that it takes to do protection training. So I started looking around at different breeders that had a history of good championship protection dogs. Unfortunately that type of puppy usually commands a price of around $2500.  Then, one of the top breeders in the Northeast suggested I come down and see his puppies and maybe he could connect me with somebody who had the same breed lines but for a little cheaper. So we connected with this backyard breeder that had a really good female and bred it with an excellent male, and they had Caesar. So we picked up Caesar for half-price at $1200, with the usual health guarantee and contract of sale. But after we’d had him home for a week and vet checked, we noticed he only had one testicle, a mono-orchid puppy. (Not sure what flowers have to do with it but that’s what they called him at the vet). Anyways the vet suggested that he was going to need surgery to find it and remove it and fix it or remove it totally and that he was not breed-able as that is a trait that could be passed on. So my contract of sale said that he would be a “complete male”, usable for breeding. So after much discussion and Internet influencing we got $600 returned to us. So Caesar was a $600 dog, with just one testicle. But that never seemed to slow him down.

When we brought Caesar home as a 10 week old puppy, he and Dakota were instantly best friends. Dakota just thought he was his own little puppy. And Dakota’s behavior became absolutely perfect! He no longer cruised the counters. He was quite content all day long being home with the puppy. He would bring toys to the puppy since the puppy was confined to the linoleum floor kitchen and papers. And as Caesar and Dakota were both growing we would take them both to dog training and Dakota began getting a little more interested in protection, but could not compete with Caesar, who was a Tasmanian devil when ever given the necessary commands.

It was about this time that I started traveling the 50 miles to Ithaca New York to do the training every weekend, which would go from 9 AM till around 1 PM, and then we have the rest of the day to do whatever. The Ithaca, New York area is in the finger Lakes region, with many wineries, and the finger Lakes trail. So the “boys”and I started hiking the finger Lakes trail and a whole bunch of other trails that ran through the state forest lands that cover the center of NY state. Initially Bradley came with us, but teenage boys find more interesting things to do, and so soon it was just us and a camera. And that is really the beginning of the YouTube channel. And so the rest of the story can really be found on the YouTube channel.

But now the boys are gone, and we turn a page and start a new chapter in North Carolina with Akela. It’s funny how things work out in such strange ways that seem to be a continuum of the past. I lost Caesar over the course of a year without really understanding what would come next. Dakota enjoyed having a companion and for quite a while we had some temporary companions. But finally I decided I needed to replace Caesar as there was a huge hole in my life. (a rich girl friend might have filled that void, but I found the dog was easier to acquire). I’m not sure if Dakota had gone first, as I had originally expected, and then I lost Caesar if I would’ve gotten another dog. Caesar was special, unlike any other dog I’d had or even seen in the past, and there have been a lot of dogs. Akela has a lot of potential, and so may end up being the “Caesar 2.0” I wish for. The next year or 2 will tell. But in any case he seems to be coming along satisfactorily and I’m sure will be a great dog for me. We will keep you all informed as things progress. So stay tuned !

Thanks For stopping by
Rick, Akela, (Caesar & Dakota in spirit, and Leah watching for on high)