Living with four German Shepherds

I read my friends review on a new book on living with German Shepherds and thought I'd have to chime in on a view things:

At times, the author’s writing made me wonder if he’s ever lived with three German Shepherds in the house at the same time. Particularly where he mentions that the fur is so bad, he’s had to hire a maid to clean the house once a week. I have to admit, that made me snicker. When I had both my German Shepherd and my Belgian Malinois, the two of them produced enough hair that it was hard to catch up on the cleaning if I didn’t vacuum every day … let alone if I only vacuumed once a week. Even now, with a Belgian Malinois who doesn’t shed nearly as much as a Shepherd – she doesn’t have the thick undercoat – I end up vacuuming at the very least every other day. My friend Sandra, over at Head over Heels, lives with four German Shepherds. I assure you she cleans much more than once a week.

 Cleaning once a week is impossible. Once a week with three dogs doesn't cut it. I've lived with one, then two, then three, then four, then 7, back to four, again five and now four dogs at the same time. Cleaning once a week... sure you can do it if you like to live in filth and dog hair. Even with cleaning once every day you end up having dog hair on your furniture, in the car and your clothes. That is just the way it is. There is a reason why they are called "German Shedders". They shed - a lot!

As for the rest of the review, I would never trust my dogs outside, unleashed, unsupervised, of a church. I put a great deal of training into my dogs but I would never trust them, throughout an entire mess, to just lay there. The best trained dogs in the world could see something exciting and decide to take off. Just yesterday we went to a parade. Indra is the dog in this household who has received the most training, who should be the most well behaved dog of all of them, however, when we walked to the Parade, she was so excited, so pumped up that she started talking, singing and pulling on the leash. She wasn't jumping up on anyone but boy oh boy, only because she couldn't be there, right next to Ronja, poor girl could have missed something and how dare I keep her back from walking right there next to her Girlfriend. 

During the Parade, all of them behaved perfectly well. Nala had a problem with sitting still because she's just so darn driven and energetic it's really hard for her to wrap her mind around the concept of sitting still. For the two weeks I've had her, she did perfectly though. 

Yukon did absolutely awesome. Two years ago I could have not taken him to an event like that. He was doing great. 

There is a lot of work that is going into my dogs. We work on the whole program and Indra is very close to beeing certified as a Wilderness Area Search and Rescue Dog, yet I would not want my dogs to be unsupervised, off leash, somewhere outside a building underneath a tree while I'm gone for about an hour if not even longer than that. 

No responsible dog owner would ever do that. Not in todays, sue happy, society.