By the Monks of New Skete.

This book is for all new puppy owners and is an enjoyable read for the experienced dog owners as well.

A beautiful intro starting with their female shepherd, Anka, anticipating birthing and taking you through the stages, week by week of the pup's lives.

It touches on many topics, from the dog psyche, training, selection testing (Volhard's), care, the list goes on.

It helped me understand what was going on in my pup's mind as she was maturing and the stages she would be going through and what to expect. Always having adult dogs and getting a pup for the first time in 13 years, this book was a godsend!

And don't be put off by the 'Monk' thing, these guys devote themselves to their dogs. This is a book for working dog people!

Good book for helping to build a relationship with your dog. I like it.

There are a few things in the book that I don't agree with, but on the whole it is good.

I also really liked most of it.

I also have the revised version of How to be Your Dog's Best Friend. They improved it quite a bit from the original (ie. they now do NOT agree with the alpha roll).

I really appreciate the monks' sincere love for dogs.

I have read the book too.I remember that when I read it it was very inspiring at the time.

The funny thing is that my old trainer knew them and had been to their place. He said they bred
S#$T dogs. Bad nerves, poor conformation, etc.

I trust my dear departed friends opinion,as he had been working GSD's for over 45 years with tremendous success, truly loved the breed, and was very knowledgable.

So I always wondered how they had such great ideas, and then such poor implementation with regards to their breeding program...... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Interesting...

The breeding program is primarily focused on breeding pets.

Some of that has changed due to a few of the monks getting involved in Schutzhund and Herding. There were some better lines brought into their program. . .but they are primarily shiznit dogs on the whole.

For some reason there is a large following of the bloodline here locally and I have yet to see one of their dogs that I would feed in my kennel.

They don't have the same goup of values that us working shepherd people do. I don't consider the vast majority of their dogs "working" bloodline dogs even though I constantly hear it from their owners.

I just started reading the book and one thing right away caught me off guard. They talk about stressing the pups at a very early age (days old) so they cope better later. That makes sense, but one thing they wrote was about taking the pup away from a heat source and putting it in a cooler room for 3 minutes to lower the internal temp. Their reasoning was to lower the internal temp to illicit a corticosteroid release in the pup. They stated that this would improve the immune function in the pups later in life. I don't know much about puppies, dogs, training, etc, but I do know that a release of corticosteroids will LOWER the immune function. Is this the accepted thought in breeding GSD's or any dog for that matter? Maybe there is a better reasoning behind this and it just doesn't come through in the book. I'm greatly interested in GSD's and am trying to learn as much as I can before I actually own one. My main concern is that I bought this book to learn about the processes a pup goes through, and if this type of thinking is flawed then how much of the rest of the book do I regard as being truthful?? Like I said I'm new to all of this and just want to make sure I'm getting the right info. Thanks

http://www.breedingbetterdogs.com/achiever.html

First off, let me say I have not read the book, so I can offer little info about their methods.

The early stress application has been studied and employed in labratory environments. The weblink I provided explains it in detail. Leaving a pup for 3 minutes seems a bit harsh to me though. If you look at the link you will see they recommend AGAINST going over the 5 second limit on any of the positions.

I did the ENS with my litter of pups. I didn't have a control group so I can not say if there was a difference or not, but the pups were not afraid of anything... maybe it was the handling, maybe it was genetics... I figure that it couldn't hurt!

Thank you for the link it was pretty informative. I have to make a correction to my previous post. They do their stress tests anywhere from 1-6 weeks old, but they don't state exactly when they do this.

http://geocities.com/marysjojosmum/biosensor.html

I have been researching breeds, breeders, and lines for months now. I ran across the Bio Sensor/Super Dog program rather early on and was very excited about it. Recently, I ran into the above web page (LONG) that provides some more info on it. I am not an expert, I do not have any experience raising puppies, I am only providing a link...

Pat