by Katja Staats
Due to a misdiagnosis, I came to the status "Blind with residual sight" and everything that went with it...
Since I absolutely had to be mobile in my everyday life, I came to see a guide dog and learned a lot. After my own experiences with dogs from a larger guide dog school, I then decided to train my next dog myself.
I chose the Spitz very consciously
My criteria were the following: the dog should be affectionate, love the whole family, not hunt, be robust and healthy. I also wished for a fur that didn't smell, pointed ears and please knee high. The predecessors were actually all too big for me and I had bad back problems. Intelligence and willingness to learn should not be missing either.
That's how I came across the Großspitz and, after a long search, my "Anuk" - Alberta from the Upper Palatinate Forest.
She came to us when she was 14 weeks old. I socialized her very carefully, so she should later be "cool" at train stations, in the middle of the city or in the middle of the forest.
Well, Anuk was cool anyway....
The training took place in a playful way, you learn pointe very quickly, you hardly need any repetitions and you forget almost nothing.
I trained solely by positive affirmation, by the time Anuk was a year old, he knew all the search terms. She learned to distinguish between benches, traffic lights, station counters, entrances, etc.
Anuk got to know the dishes at the age of one year. It is a sensitive connection between human and dog. Man feels so exactly how the dog runs. The dog associates with the harness that it is very tall and wide. Namely just as big as he together with the people.
This is how Anuk learned that she cannot get under barriers, low-hanging branches, etc. with dishes and should find creative solutions to avoid them or at least to stop. Nobody hits their head like that. Anuk also understood this very quickly. That's the beauty of Spitz: you don't need 1000 repetitions to learn something!
One of the best guide dogs I have ever tested!
When I was one and a half years old, I introduced Anuk to a very experienced vehicle inspector. We walked a completely unknown route across Nuremberg, especially in the run-up to Christmas. The examiner laughed at me! What are you doing with that spitz here? He stopped laughing pretty quickly. Anuk was safe anywhere, even on the subway (completely alien to her) and in the crush of the Christmas market. The tester's conclusion after one and a half hours: "One of the best guide dogs I have ever tested."
In the meantime, luckily for me, Anuk has become unemployed and lives a contented life as a family dog.
Text & images: Katja Staats