October, 2009

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Boerboel Rescue — Canada and USA

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Note that this advice applies to both Canadian and US Boerboel owners. In South Africa, I have recently become aware of African Tails who seems to do good all breed rescue, and can likely help you find a good resource. I’m not sure about UK/Europe, however. Sorry.

UPDATE via the UK Boerboel Group mailing list – 20091102:

The UKBC [UK Boerboel Club] has a Rescue Committee.
If you want to put a link on your website to www.ukbc.co.uk there is a Rescue and Rehoming page there with information and an email link to the club committee@ukbc. co.uk

Kind regards
Elaine

There is currently no “rescue” in Canada (in fact, after a bit of Googling I don’t believe there is still a running organization in the United States, either — though I would be very pleased to find I am wrong with that) but as I have peeked at my blog’s Analytics (for the non-web folks, basically you can see what search terms, etc. are being used to get to your site) over and over again so many people get here because they are searching for “Boerboel Rescue”.

With this in mind, let me say a few words of advice:

Don’t surrender your Boerboel to a kill shelter unless you have NO CHOICE (which is rarely the case — some choices to follow). In my opinion, a Boerboel is a dog that will not do well in those one off temperament checks that they do at a shelter. They are very social dogs, but only to those that they trust, and isolated in a kennel scenario when they are prodded with that plastic hand, I’m not sure how many wouldn’t react harshly. Not based on anything but intuition, but I suspect most Boerboels would fail a liability-oriented “adoptability test”.
Safety first. While you move onto my #3 and up, if you are considering a surrender because you are worried about your dog’s behavior with other dogs or your kids, etc. it’s very easy to separate them while you find a home. It is easier and cheaper by far to put a latch on a door or use a leash than to fight a court case.
Talk to your breeder. Breeders of any repute would take back a dog when faced with a surrender situation. If that is not working out for whatever reason, move on to the next option, but please tell people who the breeder is and what the response was, as that will be one of the first questions that people will ask: “What did your breeder say?”. Even if they are out of business, phone them up and be sure — breeders generate lots of contacts in the process of vetting prospective homes, and may have ideas.
If it’s dog behavior that is the issue, invest in an expert. Beware that in the lightly regulated trainer world, there are lots of “experts” who could be self described “whisperers”, yet what you need is someone who has been obviously successful in dealing with large dogs, and experience with Boerboels would be a bonus. There are all sorts of variables here, and I have seen people with thirty years experience who I wouldn’t use because they have experience that doesn’t fit with the behavior modification that I would be looking for in a rescue situation. Hard to explain, but hopefully you can get a good “gut feel” when asking for power breed success stories.
Do a bit of promotion. You took on this life as your responsibility, take a couple evenings out of your life to ask everywhere you can think of for help. In Canada, contact all the breeders (listed below) and contact the mailing lists and boards, listed here. Send pictures and as much info as possible to every Boerboel related email address you can find. Do not just send to a couple, as that may hit a dead-end immediately thanks to spam filters or whatever.
If you have a “hard date” where your dog must be rehomed by, state it. This will increase urgency, and probably the response.
If you are not getting any responses that are adequate, don’t hesitate to resend an email with a note to the effect that this is still an open issue. Frankly, a lot of us are softies and would not want the death of dog on our hands, thus will try our best to set up SOMETHING.
Do not sugarcoat the truth: If your dog has aggression or fear issues or attacked a dog or isn’t house trained or whatever, you’d be surprised how many people are comfortable enough with training that they would not care all that much, as it is often considered “treatable” in the long view. As Cesar Milan rightly says, only truly neurologically damaged dogs cannot be treated or homed SOMEWHERE.
Take an honest look at the long term. If you can see that it’s not going to work out, deal with it early. A young dog has more potential to be rehomed/rehabilitated than an older dog. The life of a dog is your commitment forever, but if you can see that you will break that commitment eventually anyway, now would be better than when he or she is geriatric.
For shelters or those re-homing, note that some places may not be ideal, but if they are better than death, why wouldn’t you consider them? I have been used as a reference for a semi-retired couple recently who was adopting a cat on death row, and while I totally understand the PR reasons for due diligence, I don’t think that anything short of criminal cruelty convictions should have prevented this couple from adopting. The process was privacy invasive and almost put them off of adopting. I also once attempted to facilitate an adoption of a death row dog to a home that sure wasn’t a traditional one, yet the (wrong, IMHO) decision was made to put the dog down rather than complete anything that “risky”.

Basically, I would love to pontificate over how wrong it is to take in a puppy and then change your mind as the puppy has somehow outgrown your family, but “shit happens” as they say, and if things do fall apart my primary interest is to reduce the deaths of innocent dogs, and the earlier “intervention” can take place, the better.

Breeders to contact for a Canadian Boerboel (full list here ):

Contacts and lists for Canadian and US Boerboels (these are “must hit” lists, as they get to a lot of people who are not breeders officially but who are heavily involved in the breed — full list here ):

UPDATE: Also, you can email Tara Ashlock of Select Reserve Kennels who can help “shake some trees” for homes.

FURTHER UPDATE: Tony at Pak Drift Kennels has this subforum for rescue.

Or alternatively you can contact us at email address bb (at) boerboels.ca (put it together with the @ sign) and your message can be forwarded to the above lists, but as I said there’s a risk that I’d be on vacation or my email will be on strike that week or whatever, and then you’d get frustrated and jump to option #1, which — above all — I hope you don’t need to take.

Thanks,
Ron

http://blog.boerboels.ca/?p=19

Posted in Breeders, Rescue | 9 Responses »
Tags: Boerboel, Rescue, shelter

Boerboel Rescue “Achilles” – GA, USA

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Received via Yahoo South African Boerboel newsgroup — 2009/10/23:

Pass around to your friends and/or post on other boards that my be helpful.

Achilles needs a home – abandoned at an Atlanta area veterinary clinic. He is 19 mths old and completely healthy. his birthday is listed as March 4, 2008. I have spoken with the Vet at the clinic. They first saw Achilles when he was four months old. He was left at their clinic for boarding recently and the owners have not returned for him or responded to attempts to contact them with regard to the dog. The vet says he is very human friendly, however, he is dog aggressive. Best they can figure is that the dog has turned out be more than they expected. I have contacted the only other breeder I know of here in Georgia and he has determined it is not one of his. The name of the former owners was not provided.

If you know of someone who may be interested or a breeder who had a litter around this time, please feel free to contact me and I will put them in contact with the Veterinarian’s office. I could also transport within a reasonable distance.

Regards,

Kerri
Centurion Boerboels
www.dogsbydale.com
404-323-0094

Please go here if you are looking for information on Boerboel Rescue in the US or Canada.

Update 2009/11/03 – Poor guy is still stuck at the Vet’s office. If you know Boerboels, this is “sub-optimal” as they really thrive off of family interaction, and he really needs to find a home, soon. Please forward this to anyone you can think of. Even if a home is located way out of the GA area, we can probably piece together transport to get him somewhere.

Thanks so much for any help.

Ron

Posted in Rescue | 5 Responses »

Top 15 Producing Boerboels

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

For the Boerboel pedigree geeks, here’s a bit of Boerboel stats noting the 15 most prolific Boerboels (measured by who produced the most SABT registered pups). Credit where credit is due, first, this is a data mashup mostly from a bookmarked page I had from the good people over at the http://molosserdeboeren.net/ site (who also happen to maintain one of the two major pedigree databases that I know of, the Online Boerboel Pedigree. The other database is the Pedigree of the Boerboel site)

I also merged in some hyperlinks to the pedigrees, and some thumbnails of the dogs (assuming that thumbnails would constitute fair use.)

Now, prolific parents can be good and bad for the breed. Dogs such as Roenard Martiens are clearly anchor studs for the breed that is the modern Boerboel, but if (hypothetically) any such dog threw anything undesirable, there would be a lot of genes out there to deal with. Anyway, it struck me as interesting stats, and hope it’s of use to you as well.

Thanks again, of course, to the good people of both mentioned registries for the data.

	Sire Name	Progeny	SABT No	DOB	Score
1	ROENARD MARTIENS	292	19960134032	1996-10-25	89.90%
2	OPPIBULT TOLLA	266	19920173032	1992-08-14	82.00%
3	CORMA BUKS	248	19930149003	1993-10-02	80.00%
4	PIONA VEGTER	244	19910113027	1991-07-24	83.00%
5	VANDERBIJL BULLET	236	19990986004	1999-09-16	89.60%
6	PIONA LUGAR	224	19950113040	1995-10-19	86.40%
7	CABERET KLEIN BUKS	215	19980397013	1998-08-02	87.00%
8	DOPPER HITLER	205	19980188006	1998-02-26	87.80%
9	ZANTAH BOSTON	195	19981365004	1998-09-30	89.70%
10	MIZPAH BULL BOEL BOETA	193	19970592009	1997-04-21	85.00%	(no picture)
11	PIONA OUBAAS	183	19930113015	1993-03-08	80.67%
12	DOPPER MADALA	165	19990188012	1999-02-16	86.70%
13	NOSTRADAMUS JOCK	164	19980782001	1998-04-24	89.60%
14	AVONTUUR ALFONS	161	19970323052	1997-09-14	94.00%	(no picture)
15	NOSTRAS ROCKY	157	20022238013	2002-10-23	91.10%

Posted in Breeders | 1 Response »

The Dominance Myth

Monday, October 19th, 2009

I was just talking to someone on the weekend who was a long term breeder, and he was still a believer in all the Dominance stuff that they used to teach back in the 80′s and was sort of shocked that I wasn’t, so I promised to publish a few links here. Before I go on, remember that I am posting things based on cited, scientific references. I’m sure, for example, you can find lots of people with opinions that are different, but please only use cited references if you believe anyone is “out to lunch.”

First off, a (cited! ) definition from the American Vet Society of Animal Behavior:

Dominance is defined as a relationship between individual animals that is established by force/aggression and submission, to determine who has priority access to multiple resources such as food, preferred resting spots, and mates (Bernstein 1981; Drews 1993).

I’m pressed for time, so I’ll cop out and just jump right into the Position Statement on Dominance of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) which states:

In our relationship with our pets, priority access to resources is not the major concern… [W]hat owners really want is not to gain dominance, but to obtain the ability to influence their pets to perform behaviors willingly —which is one accepted definition of leadership (Knowles and Saxberg 1970; Yin 2009).

They also state some position points on trainers:

• The AVSAB recommends that veterinarians not refer clients to trainers or behavior consultants who coach and advocate dominance hierarchy theory and the subsequent confrontational training that follows from it.

• Instead, the AVSAB emphasizes that animal training, behavior prevention strategies, and behavior modification programs should follow the scientifically based guidelines of positive reinforcement, operant conditioning, classical conditioning, desensitization, and counter conditioning.

• The AVSAB recommends that veterinarians identify and refer clients only to trainers and behavior consultants who understand the principles of learning theory and who focus on reinforcing desirable behaviors and removing the reinforcement for undesirable behaviors.

Now, as an aside I think some Boerboel breeders and trainers would argue there is a bit of a place in being sure your dog at least understands that he or she is still in a “correct place” in the home, but that is typically far less of a hierarchy or dominance issue than it is a “you had best make some good judgment calls” issue. While people often say to me “but The Dog Whisperer believes in Dominance!” I say yes, that’s true, his words say that, but his actions and instincts of being clear to the dog that I Mr. Dog Whisperer have a plan, and you, my friend, are going to follow it now, are actually dead on and effective regardless of what you call it (“having a plan” is what a friend of mine with many years of dog training experience calls that “calm assertiveness” thing that is basically what Cesar does so well.)

The position paper clarifies on leadership vs. dominance as follows:

… dominance and leadership are not synonymous. In the human-related fields of business management and sociology, where leadership is studied extensively, leadership is defined broadly by some as “the process of influencing activities of an individual or group to achieve a certain objective in a given situation” (Dubrin 1990, in Barker 1997).

Despite this definition, which includes influence through coercion, scholars in these fields recommend against the use of coercion and force to attempt to gain leadership (Benowitz 2001). Coercion and force generate passive resistance, tend to require continual pressure and direction from the leader, and are usually not good tactics for getting the best performance from a team (Benowitz 2001). Additionally, those managers who rule through coercive power (the ability to punish) “most often generate resistance which may lead workers to deliberately avoid carrying out instructions or to disobey orders” (Benowitz 2001).

Similarly with pets, leadership should be attained by more positive means—by rewarding appropriate behaviors and using desired resources as reinforcers for these behaviors. Leadership is established when a pet owner can consistently set clear limits for behavior and effectively communicate the rules by immediately rewarding the correct behaviors and preventing access to or removing the rewards for undesirable behaviors before these undesirable behaviors are reinforced. Owners must avoid reinforcing undesirable behaviors and only reinforce the desirable behaviors frequently enough and consistently enough for the good behaviors to become a habit (Yin 2007).

A few more resources (oddly, some of these intersperse Alpha Male Theory — also debunked and surely to be my next rant )…
International Positive Dog Trainers Association article ( http://www.ipdta.org/#The_Dominance_Theory ):

Although it may seem as though we are “splitting hairs” with terminology, the main difference is this. According to The Oxford Dictionary, “Dominance” means “in control over a group” and “assertive” means “to insist”. An assertive dog is challenging a person or another dog to win resources that it wishes to control, not in order to control the other person or dog; therefore, a dog’s competing for a desired resource has nothing to do with ranking.

Quotes from wolf expert David Mech via NY Times Article ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/opinion/31derr.htm )

“The typical wolf pack,” Dr. Mech wrote in The Canadian Journal of Zoology in 1999, “is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of a group in a division-of-labor system.” In a natural wolf pack, “dominance contests with other wolves are rare, if they exist at all,” he writes.

So, what does this all mean in a day-to-day “what is my Boerboel thinking” sort of way? Basically, I’d say your relationship with your dog may not be as adversarial as you may have imagined. Furthermore, I’d propose that this likely extends to a large amount of his or her interactions within your “pack” if you have multiple dogs. Finally, some of the symbolism we’ve been told to look out for (for example, NILIF (Nothing In Life is Free) training, “never let a dog enter a room in front of you” or “never let a dog on the furniture” or “never let a dog go first when playing Monopoly” ) may not be as important as we may have been led to believe.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day — next time, I may take the on the alpha wolf.

Posted in Training | 1 Response »

A couple of nicer Boerboel pictures

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Just to break the negativity from the previous (graphic) post.

SANY0121

L_20081129a

Posted in General | No Responses »
Tags: Boerboel, pictures

SA News: ‘Boerboellie’ admits his guilt

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

I don’t usually re-post articles via the blog, but the Citizen (JOHANNESBURG, South Africa) site is substantially sluggish via North America with respect to this story by ALEISHA TISSEN, so this is the only way I can spread the news on this guy who beat his Boerboel for urinating on his wife’s truck tire. I believe the dog was beaten so badly that the dog had to be put down by the SPCA, but am having trouble verifying that report from this facebook reference (UPDATE: more details below — it’s more complex as the dog was initially thought to be an “aggressive stray” thus the kill order (?)).

I don’t speak Afrikaans, but assume the Boerboellie is a play on “Boerboel” and “Bully”.

Based on the public outcry and opinion, he had little option but to plead guilty to charges of beating a boerboel, which he had claimed was a stray, with a pickaxe handle.

He also could not refute CCTV footage clearly showing him provoking the dog and beating it relentlessly.

Johan Lee, who is a businessman from Middelburg, Mpumalanga, was sentenced yesterday following a mammoth run of court appearances in the Middelburg Magistrate’s Court.

SPCA inspector Ian Lombard believes he was stalling the case but is glad it’s finally all over.

He apparently received a 30 day jail term and a fine (plus a creative community service stint with the Police Dog Service — well done) and the judge did not impose the ban on future animal ownership requested by the SPCA.

“It’s a victory for the boerboel and for the SPCA,” Lombard [SPCA] told The Citizen.

More details from these two earlier reports (http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=101523,1,22, http://www.thecitizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=101659,1,22 ):

Basically, it appears that after beating the dog, the owner (not realizing or considering the video) called the SPCA to collect an “aggressive stray”.

After allegedly being hit repeatedly by the man with a pick-axe handle, the boerboel was removed from the property by Ian Lombard of the Middleburg SPCA. Lombard was initially told the dog was an “aggressive stray”.

Three months later, it was discovered that there was CCTV camera footage of the beating and Lombard immediately obtained a court order to remove it. “That I was given the wrong story only surfaced after I viewed the footage,” Lombard said.

The dog was euthanased [sic] 21 days after being removed from the property on December 31. This was prior to the footage being discovered.

It is clear that the dog was horrifically beaten, but not to death, as it survived 21 days.

Expecting growls or an indication of attack, Lombard [SPCA] carefully approached the dog. “I approached him with ease, put a lead around his neck and gently walked him out of the office. As soon as he started leaving, he went down on all fours, as he appeared scared,” Lombard said.

…

Once unconscious, the man again hits the dog and then inspects the pick handle for blood before walking away. The dog, in the meantime, has regained consciousness and is seen scampering from the video frame.

Sigh.

Posted in General | 5 Responses »
Tags: abuse, south africa

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