I've seen several young handlers that have and are doing very well. The thing they all have in common is that their folks started them out with appropriate dogs. They are also in very supportive clubs.
They each handle better than most adults and all have national level potential.
In our club we have Dominic who was recently awarded the first USA Youth Master Gold Medal.
from his family's website ...
Dominic entered his first schutzhund event at the age of 4! At age 8 he achieved an FH title on Gringo v Malsegg, at age 11 he achieved his first Handler Owner Trained title with Moose v Lindesfarne, he won the 2008 Youth Championship with Vimo v Alschbachtal, and 2009 Mid East Regional Youth Champion with HOT Moose v Lindesfarne! Dominic has also achieved the rank of club level helper
Moose is the first dog he trained from scratch. They had to do a C-section on the mother. The vet handed Dominic the largest pup. He wiped him off and exclaimed, "Wow! He's a Moose!" The name kind of stuck. Moose have been a very solid performer who generally has V scores in tracking and protection. Obedience, as is common with this type of dog, run high 80's, low 90's. Dominic has been quite adamant about training this dog himself. Mark and Michele provide him with a lot of coaching. Dominic truely earned that SchH3 Club jacket.
Dominic is also a very accomplished trial helper. His skills at working a dog are excellent. Again, Mark has tutored him a lot. He is one of the youngest to be classified as a USA Club-level helper.
At our recent trial, he and Moose took High In Trial with 100-91-99: 290. He narrowly edged out Stan, who at 88, did a 100 pt routine with his HOT dog, Pauli. Stan 'only' had 91 pts on the track.
Dominic worked a number of dogs at the trial too.
Dominic's routines ...
http://www.mytrialphotos.com/ogbuckeye/20100724/Dominic/index.html
I expect to see Dominic at the Nationals before too long. The only question is will he be on the podium or wearing the sleeve on the field.
Another young helper is Samantha from the USA Northeastern Region. This spring, at 8, she wowed the stands with an excellent stadium performance at the USA Working Dog Championship. She took it quite seriously -- she made it clear she wanted to trial with the big folks. Trialing an older female, Hessie, she had scores in low 90's.
Some shots of her routines,
http://www.germanshepherddog.com/samantha/album/
(Don Yelle, the back half helper, owed Ulan v. Leerburg - a Ron/Lucy son, who he took to the 2004 or 2005 Nationals)
She is coached by her dad, Pedro Jimenez and T Floyd. T now runs a Schutzhund Youth Camp each summer. He's quite passionate about the sport and youth participation, I remember watching his 8 year old daughter at the 2004 Mideast Regionals turn in a very nice peformance. He was quite the proud dad on that one -- and I got that all on film.
After Samanatha had finished her performance, I saw her doing some drive building in the spectator area with some 14 week old puppes out of her dad's old dog. She was doing a **very** nice job of working the pup. Her timing was excellent.
The USA organization has a very active program to encourage youth participation and also sponsors academic scholarships for youth participants. (
http://www.schutzhundyouth.com/ ),
http://www.germanshepherddog.com/members/YouthNews.htm
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