Foxfire Kennels
Marko vom Gluckstag
April 1, 2003 marked the passing of our Marko at the age of 14. He was the
son of Alf Stoffelblick and our female Fiona vom Holstentor. While never titled
past the Begleithunde, he taught me and a number of beginning helpers what it
was to work a good, solid , hard biting dog. We also used him many times to
let rank amateurs "take a bite" just for the hell of it.
He also taught a couple of helpers that it is not always safe to drop the sleeve,
expecting the dog to carry it around like a toy.
That was, admittedly, a few years ago ..such behavior is no longer considered
"acceptable " in some training circles. The opposite is true in our
"training circle", however. We still believe that Schutzhund is not
for sport only and serves best as a breeding tool when it is not treated as
such.
We'll miss Marko, but he had a good , long working life. We'll probably never
have another one as good...but then , who knows, we might.
Utz vom Gluckstag
We lost another of our favorite, home bred dogs in 2006.
Utzy died of complications from an Pasteurella infection which we believe he
contracted from an encounter with a cat. Utz was not your average sleeve dog,
he represented what we like most in a dog, fighting spirit and a willingness
to bring the fight to any encounter. We miss him terribly especailly on training
day. Unlike Marko, he didn't have a chance to live
a long life and achieve what he was capable of..he was 4 years old.
I keep these "memorials" on the site because these are probably the
last two good dogs Betty and I have had and both were home bred. They may well
be the last we will ever have.
Training
We train with the USA affiliated Southern Tier
Schutzhund Club . We like to emphasize the dog/handler relationship and the
club setting is an excellent means of doing so.
The emphasis in our club is keeping it light and having fun. . No big egos,
no big rivalries and no turf battles. Jim is the training director and as such
enforces only 3 rules
Anyone interested in training with us is encouraged to come visit and see how we do it. You will not be ignored and we will do our best for you and your dog. We have no formal evaluation proceedure. If we like you you can join . We don't care what kind or quality of dog you have, if you want to train it, we will do what we can and we'll have some fun doing it. We want training to be fun for the dog and fun for the owner , our training methods reflect this .
Southern Tier Schutzhund Club
The Southern Tier Schutzhund Club was founded in 1996 and approved as a United Schutzhund Clubs of America full member club in 1998.
Our 2009 trial was held on October 17 with USA judge Carla Griffith. We had a pretty good day. 4 members earned SchH titles and 3 members earned the BH rating.
Carla did a good job keeping everyone relaxed and not being a ridiculous hard ass about judging. Even the first time BH handlers were relatively at ease.
Kim Behrman and Ari and Jim McGovern with Zach -SchH1 titles, John Krichbaum with Raven - SchH2 and Jim Baldwin with Jake -SchH3. Michelle Hinton and Robbie , Salle Richards and ## and Rick Sutliff with Caesar - BH ratings.
Our next trial will be on October 16-17 , 2010 with a helper certification on October 15 with Frank Phillips
.Jim Baldwin 607-257-1683 E Mail Dog Training
Nutrition
For a long time , we fed Purina Pro Plan Performance, but lately have been experimenting with Native, a new premium food produced by Kent Feeds..the owner of , among others Blue Seal Feeds. It contains no corn , alledgedly only high quality ingredients...don't they all.. and a reasonably high caloric content, about 4850 Kcal/Kg. It is quite a bit less expensive and fresher than Pro Plan was most of the time. We are still evaluating it but so far it seems OK. ,In addition we occasionally feed our own ground "lamb", like most other "lamb" in dog food it is really cull ewe. We find this to be a good addition of calories in the winter and a tasty treat as well. Unfortunately, from the dog's viewpoint and fortunately , from our sheep enterprise viewpoint, we do not have a lot of this available. What we do have is not "certified" organic , but we never use sick animals only older sheep culled for lack of production. . We do not use antibiotics or any chemical additives, the exception being worming of the flock. We do intend to have this meat available for sale in the future.
We feed no supplements . To our knowledge there is little credible scientific evidence that supplementation adds anything to canine nutrition.
