Kaja (Polish translation is “princess of gods”) is my 7 year old German Shepherd Dog from the Czech Republic and Jinopo kennels. She is my second Shepherd from that kennel. My first Shepherd, Sascha, passed away in 2015.
I’ve trained dogs all of my life, and I had a wonderful relationship with my previous Shepherd and I assumed Kaja would be no different.
How WRONG I was! First, Kaja was huge at 8 weeks old, 19 pounds versus 13 pounds at 8 weeks for Sascha. Kaja was also fiercely independent, very wary of humans, dog aggressive, and just didn’t seem to value me very much as her handler. She would do basic commands that I taught her, if she felt like it, but she was so stubborn, it was clear to me she didn’t have much loyalty to me. She was very unlike my previous Shepherd and I honestly thought I was in over my head with her.
I was desperate to find something, anything, where she and I could bond like I had with all of my previous dogs. Sascha loved doing protection work, and I briefly tried that with Kaja. She loved biting the sleeve, but just didn’t seem to have the same enthusiasm that Sascha had. One day I googled “fun activities to do with your dog” and stumbled across this sport called “Scentwork.” I’d never heard of such a thing. I had played games with my previous dogs where I would have them find treats in the yard, or to do some tracking-type exercises, but that was the extent.
As luck would have it, there was an instructor in the Houston area who taught beginning Scentwork classes and I decided to sign up.
Whoa! Kaja lit up like a Christmas tree at being able to use her nose to find things! We spent lots of time searching for the odor of Birch in cardboard boxes and Kaja just loved it. It was a nice thing to see her find some joy in doing something with me. I take that back. I wasn’t really part of the picture back then. She had joy at using her nose, I was just a guy holding the end of the leash.
One day I received a message from a complete stranger asking if I could use my “police dog” to help find this German Shepherd that had been missing for months, but had recently been spotted around this large park. I made it very clear Kaja was not a “police dog” and we just took some Scentwork classes, I’d never utilized her to find another animal or human for that matter. They still asked if I would try as they were desperate. I said I would try, but not to expect much.
I hooked Kaja up to her harness (it was actually Sascha’s harness) and a long tracking line, let Kaja smell some fur from the missing dog, and she took off like a bullet, nose to the ground. I thought there is no way she knows what she’s doing or what I am expecting her to do, but she was so enthusiastic I just let her do her thing. We would come across dead animals, like possums or squirrels, and she would completely ignore those. She would come across some dog poo, and would give it some good sniffs and it sure seemed like to me, she was saying yep, this is what I am looking for, or no, this is not the dog I’m looking for. All of this continued until it was dark.
The next day Kaja and I met the folks again who were searching for that lost Shepherd. Kaja and I spent hours trailing this Shepherd. We knew we were close because we would see people while we were searching and asked if they had seen the missing Shepherd recently. Each time we kept hearing yes, and we seemed to be getting closer and closer.
You can likely guess at this point that we were able to locate that Shepherd. That’s not really the amazing part. The amazing part is Kaja seemed to know what she was being asked to do. She would find moist areas where the dog had been sleeping, sniff all the different animal poo to know if she was on the right track. Most importantly, I was finally her partner, her teammate. She needed me to keep her hydrated if nothing else. This instance where we spent 1.5 days became the turning point in my relationship with Kaja. She would still remain fiercely independent, but we developed a connection that we never had before. And, it’s only continued to grow since then.
