Just a question to throw out to you.

I have sold all the pups in our litter and found that out of 8 puppies, 1 of them had a personality which I did not like. He would shy away from me. He did not like to come into the house when I told him to, he hated going into the crate with his other litter mates. In general, he liked to be pet, but on his terms.

I am pretty confused about this personality. I did a lot of handling with all the pups, did one on one time, grooming and some training before they left my home. I would have thought that ALL the pups would have the same, wonderful personality....but that particular one did not. He tended to get scared easily when he was between 3 and 5 weeks old. Mainly, he was afraid of our porch outside...his whole body would freeze up until I picked him up and put him in the grass to releave himself.

He was not the most dominant pup, none of them were. They were all sold by the time they were 8 to 9 weeks old.

I just thought that I would throw this question out there, I would certainly be grateful to know more about pups and their personalities.

Thanks ahead of time!

What was your question?

Try reading Scott and Fuller's Gentics and Social Behavior of the Dog. :rolleyes:

Okay, I will elaborate a little. This is from your web page:

http://gsdpup.tripod.com/pups/index.html
"Sheba (aka Fraulein) is a dominant female. She has turned out to be a good protection dog. We rescued her earlier this year. She would have made for a good Shutzhund dog, but because she was kept in a cage with little attention, she would rather be glued to her owner."

My guess is that she looks like a "good protection dog" to you because she has weak nerves and gets scared. This was passed on to the pup, who will be an extremely weak nerved scared of everything dog if my guess is correct. I am just guessing according to what I have seen from the same type of breeder while working for a vet. The only way to prevent producing more puppies like this is to spay and neuter the parents and all of the pups.

I have seen one GSD pup like this. He "snapped" during a vet visit and tried to attack the vet at 12 weeks because he was so scared. The vet tried to convince the owners to put him out of his misery before he mauled someone. Hopefully this is all wrong, but I am just telling you my experiences with extremely fearful puppies. Keep some money around so that you can give the owners a full refund just in case.

You may be right...I am still trying to figure out if it is weak nerves or due to how she was raised. Tomorrow I will be talking to the man who breed her parents to find out if the parents of Fraulein had good nerves or not.

While she is an American breed, her pedigree is a combo of SchH with a few show dogs.

She came from a very sheltered home where her owner was 70 years old and later died. She was then left in a pen with little attention for some 6 months.

She is great at keeping strangers away (or at bay), and she has come along way with our noisy home. We have had to work hard at gaining her confindence. She just was not used to all the noise and expectations that we put on her. We have been using positive training for her which has worked wonders. Also, she is very dominate when with other dogs.

My biggest hurdle with her right now is that she can be tempermental. Sometimes she wants attention...other times she preferrs to be left alone in her crate. We are still working with her. We hope to sell her to a good home that is quieter than ours. We plan on moving to another state and do not forsee her being able to cope with that very well.

But like I said, you may be right...this pup that has an odd personality might just be because of nerves....we will see as I do more investigation.

I do want to add, that when in scary situations, she has never even tried to bite. Rather she submits. You can tell she does not like it...but she tolerates things that she does not like.

We were at the vets office recently..I told them to put a muzzle on her since I was not sure what she would do when the man picked her up. She put up no fight, they even took the muzzle off and held her with little effort.

Spay her. Especially if you are going to sell her.

That sounds exactly like the problem. Please spay her, since you already have one pup's blood on your hands (when he snaps). These "combo" pedigrees are a lot of nothing and often bring the worst of both sides into the offspring. I'm lucky with Auster because instead of her having that bad of a temperment she just has almost every health problem known.

Your female hasn't bitten yet just because the situation hasn't been scary enough. It can happen and will happen if the situation is right. Any breeder that would sell a female like that will full breeding rights doesn't know any more than you do. You would also be wise to offer some amount of money back in exchange for the puppies being spayed or neutered.

Wait...what are you talking about..."one pups blood on your hands"?

Also, I limited the AKC registration...no one can breed with registration.