All my life i have loved German Shepherds but we have always had cats (Don't get me wrong, I do adore our cats!). Melinda on the other hand has had both but mostly dogs and even my mum now has a dog. When I was much younger our neighbour had a German Shepherd called 'Purdey', I used to take her for walks regularly and loved every minute.
This year we lost Percy our old tabby (age 21!) and that finally made my mind up that the next pet that we would get would be a German Shepherd.
So, after 5 months, we have taken the plunge and very soon we will be picking up our new dog, 'Luca'. We have already been to see him, he is quite a large lad especially against the rest of his litter mates and looks remarkably like a bear! So currently we are hurriedly getting together all the supplies we will need, vets appointments and insurance.
We spent a great deal of time looking for the right breeder and the right litter for us. We finally found a breeder in Surrey called
Bundaberg GSD. Graham who owns Bundaberg was so accomodating and let us come to see his setup even before the pups had been born. We met him and his wife and were introduced to the mother 'Jess' who at that point only had about 3 weeks before the pups were due. Jess had the perfect temperament in addition to be being a beautiful looking GSD. We left Tom and Amelia sitting with her for a while and she was perfect with them both.
Having met Graham and seen what Jess was like we made an instant decision that we wanted a pup from her litter.
Jess had a litter on 5th August of 3 dogs and 5 bitches. We went to visit them at 6 weeks and were able to pick our pup from the 3 dogs available. One Graham had already reserved for himself so we had the choice of any of the other two.
On looking at the pups we all fell in love with one that was much larger than all the others, he was quite bold and alert, so after about 5 minutes the decision was made, this was Luca! We took some photos and arranged a date to come back and collect him.
All is now sorted and ready for Luca's arrival. We have stairgates installed and have bought food, toys, collars, lead and all the paraphernalia that will be needed to make our home his.
Update: Well, Luca is now 16 weeks old and has certainly made his presence known in our household. He does tend to nip a bit and get himself overexcited when we try to chastise him, but on the whole he is growing into a very handsome dog.
We are well into a puppy training course down in Ditton and Luca is learning Sit/Down/Stay commands and recall, he is becoming more and more socialised with other dogs. Recently we took Luca round to a fiends house where they have a retriever, the two dogs spent ages chasing round and round the garden.
Luca loves his walks (having now had all his injections and been microchipped) as everything is so interesting, and gets very excited once you start putting your coat on. He especially liked it when we had snow, never having seen this before, he spent the whole walk with his head to the ground and ended up with a snowdrift on the end of his nose. He is learning to sit before crossing any roads and has to endure meeting Amelia from school ... all those noisy schoolchildren!
Update : Luca has now reached 10 months and is still growing! He can reach most things in the kitchen and we have lost toast, chicken wings and other assorted foodstuffs that were sitting on the kitchen worksurfaces as Luca walked past.
He has now completed his initial puppy training, passed his Bronze certificate and is now working on his Silver certificate in the Good Citizen scheme at dog training. He still loves his walks and now we can happily let him off his lead to run alongside us through the woods and fields.
Update - 22/7/09 : Luca has now passed his Silver certificate. It's Gold next! He now happily runs free when we walk him away from any roads, but he will not run far and is constantly checking that his family are still with him. Luca has learnt a number of new activities, he can hunt for and find a hidden toy in the front room, give a paw, sit and stay at doors allowing us through first, if given treats or food he will leave it until he is told he can eat it, and if one of us hides during his walk he can hunt them out.