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 no longer have any club affiliation but continue to train primarily bite
work weekly with a few friends. We had a good run of 26 years training "formally"
but as we got older, Jim is 71 and Betty 72 we dialed it back. We still very
much enjoy working with the dogs. We currently have 9 GSDs, 3 are old like us
. We do the bite work with all of them, though, as best they can. We also have
3 rescue bassets that do essentially nothing .
Nutrition
We now are using a varied feeding program using Pro Plan Performance and Adult shredded formula, Native Level Four as well as our own lamb/ rice / egg mixture. We have a number of challenges ranging from old age to sensitive stomach issues. We have tested for the common digestive problems such as pancreatic function and malabsorbtion syndromes and have not been able to identify even an idiopathic problem, so we manage the problems with diet , sometimes successful sometimes not so much.
