I found some of the training videos Joel has on youtube while searching for our next dog and felt a lot of his approach made sense so dug a little deeper. I always had a lot of respect for working line dogs but never thought I had the time/understanding to do one of these dogs justice. After a few weeks of watching more videos and diving into the podcast I started to come around and decided to pull the trigger and put a deposit down on a Fortress K9 Dutch Shepard. My prior dogs were a Boxer/American bull dog mix and boxer that were at best "good boys" but had no level of obedience. I've had Loki for a little over a year now and cant wait to see how he turns out. I work in the automotive field and we have a three year old daughter. Most hobbys outside of dog training revolve around staying active, running, hiking, biking, gardening etc.
Was interested in buying a puppy to train as a service dog for myself. Only wanted a Malinois, Dutch or German Shepard so naturally thats what they have. We could not afford a fully trained service dog and even a puppy stretched our budget if we went that route. Leaned he was teaming with another organization to provide a service dog fully trained and paid for. Applied and after 6 months we got Sickle for myself. Had her about 8 months now and she is wonderful. Very blessed for myself and my family.
I deal with prosopagnosia (face blindness) which makes interacting both irritating and sometimes dangerous. I used my previous shepherd to help discern who is stranger and who is friend and who is stranger. Their natural distrust of strangers works in my best advantage. I hope to train mine to best of my ability so he can travel with me throughout the day since his memory is already better then mine.
My dog isn't from Fortress k9 (I live in Canada), but I found fortress k9 and Joel's podcast shortly after putting my deposit down on my pup and did an about face in my training philosophy as I devoured the podcast! My GSD pup is 6mo now and is training mainly to help with aspects of my chronic fatigue syndrome so I can enjoy hiking and camping more like I used to. But I would also love to someday train in person at fortress k9, so I'm looking for ways to make that happen. ????
Live In Alaska and have multiple Mals with my wife that we have trained our selves. Found fortress through Joels podcast and it immediately reminded me of some dog philosophy from a book that I had read as it is very similar but it was lite on specifics as far as the processes. We were exstatic when we found K9 academy with a step by step process so we can see if what we had gleaned from the podcast was accurate.
