The Schaferhunde News
The German Shepherd Dog Club of Greater Kansas City
Founded 1923
Issue - February 2018
On February 25, 2018 at Smithville Lake; Gero and I drew track #1 on a crisp Sunday morning. He dropped to the ground at the start flag and stuck his nose down in the bandana...then we were off!
The track was three hours old on damp, deep grass, he was moving down the track at a brisk pace and I was hanging on. The track took a left turn then the cross tracks came across; another right turn with another set of cross tracks...no indecision on Gero's part, he was on a mission. He downed at the first article; he and I took a sip of water and then we were off again! This was starting to be fun! The next left turn was toward the woods and I could see the ditch. He trotted quickly through the woods and jumped down in the ditch and up the other side, I knew I had to slow him down so I could catch up. He dropped immediately on command into his down on the bank waiting patiently for his much slower handler! Coming out of the woods he indicated the next article, and shortly after another turn. We started moving through tall grass...I felt we had to be getting close to the glove. Giving him his "find it" command one more time, I felt him pull hard into the harness and pick up speed to scent that elusive glove. We found it and the celebration ensued!!! This test was special as it was four years ago almost to the day that Ali got her TDX...I know she was helping us from heaven. Thanks to my GSDC tracking friends, Rosi Von Fintel, Sally Hamm and Ray Laughlin for the motivation and making it fun! Big thanks also to Ulysses James and Ellen Lash for the photos.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018, General Meeting 7:00 p.m., Comfort Inn, 7300 NE Parvin Road, Kansas City, Mo. The Board will meet at 5:30 p.m. All members are welcome to attend the board meeting.
KATE SIDUN WILL BE THE PROGRAM SPEAKER:
German Shepherd Friends. I will be speaking at The German Shepherd Dog Club of Greater Kansas City!!!!
It doesn't matter is you have working dogs, show dogs or just a great pet this club is for German Shepherd enthusiasts.
My presentation will be on Trailing. I will speak on how the mechanics of the dog's nose actually works, we will talk about Trailing Theory (using some of Jeff Schettler astounding work), Odor Education and the Process of choosing a working Partner.
There will be a sign-up sheet for a free E-Book version of K9 Chronicle Magazine (www.K9Chronicle.us)
I will be bringing amazing all natural and holistic treats handmade by the wonderful Cindy Sunday-Bartha who owns/operates Canine Crumpets.
Classes are starting in April. With warmer weather right around the corner it is time to get your furry friend signed up for some fun training classes. Macken Park in North Kansas City is a great place to train and the instructors are amazing too.
Enrolling in classes is a CLICK away (www.gsdcgkc.com) Training - Tails & Treats in the Park. Select classes
Week #1 - April 12 Engagement - Instructors: Debbie McHenry and Sally Hamm
Week #2 - April 19 Canine Conditioning - Instructor: Darcy Seeger
Week #3 - April 26 Introduction to Rally & Obedience - Instructor: Nancy Kennedy
Week #4 - May 3 Trick and Train - Instructors: JoClair Gipe and Susan Hunt
Week #5 - May 10 Beginning Obedience - Instructor: Rosi VonFintel
Week #6 - May 17 Introduction to Agility - Instructor: Cheryl May
Easy on-line payment method available using PAYPAL when signing up for classes.
When: Thursday's beginning April 12th - May 17th
Time: 7:00 p.m. - 8:15 p.m.
Where: Wheel Park in Macken Park, 1000 E. 27th Avenue, North Kansas City, Missouri
Cost: GSDCGKC Members $50 / Non-Members $60.00
There is a twelve dog limit for classes. Individual classes will be $15/session and $25 for two sessions, if available. German Shepherds preferred but will accept any breed if space is available.
For additional information or questions regarding training, contact Cindy Hartman, cindy@gsdcgkc.com.
The Club once again will be hosting a Wine Pull fundraiser at the Topeka Kennel Club show in August. In order to make this a successful fundraising event we need your help. Our goal this year is to sell 100 wine pulls. That means we must acquire 100 bottles of wine.
The benefactor of the funds raised will again be our friends the National Police Canine Association.
Please make a wine donation or if you prefer to give a monetary donation we would be happy to purchase the wine for you.
Bobbie Schiffelbein and Carmi Swift are chairing the Wine Pull. If you have any questions or would like to volunteer at the event, please contact Bobbie or Carmi.
GOAL 100 Bottles
What is older than?
New York City the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (1924)
Charles Lindbergh Flies the Atlantic Solo (1927)
Hitler Becomes German Chancellor (1933)
King Edward VIII Abdicates (1936)
Hindenburg Airship Crash (1937)
Pearl Harbor Attacked (1941)
The German Shepherd Dog Club of Greater Kansas City - Founded in 1923
FEATURED CLUB MEMBER
Submitted by Marion Baker
JoClair Gipe has been a member of the Club since June of 2017. I know her by simply J.C. from our AT&T days together. JoClair has been very active in the club helping where and whenever needed. She will be instructing one of the Tails & Treats classes this Spring.
Hello everyone, my name is JoClair Gipe. I was born in southern Missouri in Porter Wagoner’s hometown of West Plains. My paternal grandparents lived in West Plains most of their lives and knew Porter. My grandpa owned the only radio and TV repair shop in West Plains, and Porter would occasionally drop by and visit with my grandpa when he was in town. My mother told me that she got to play guitar and sing with Porter on grandpa’s porch during a couple of his visits. We moved to the Kansas City area when I was little, settling in Lee’s Summit where I graduated high school in 1975. I joined the Army in 1979 wanting to travel and see the world. My aptitude tests showed me to have a decent mechanical ability so I became a helicopter mechanic on the old UH-1H helicopters. These were the helicopters that you always see Stallone flying in his Rambo movies. J I was stationed down in El Paso, Texas in the 507th Medivac Unit, the 507th had a rather grisly motto of, “You die, we fly.” My unit was a military assistant to safety and traffic for the local hospitals, we life flighted patients in emergency situations. Part of our military responsibilities was to aid other units in their training exercises in the desert. We would fly over and bomb them with CS gas, and then for our training, we would turn around and fly back to rescue the ones who forgot their gas masks! We also flew out and brought soldiers back from their desert training that collapsed from dehydration. We also got to train in White Sands NM, we would fly out and then repel down the mountainside pretending to save someone. There were lots of things that were fun down there, but it wasn’t home.
I chose not to re-enlist at the end of my first tour and came back here where I worked for Kelly Girls until I could find permanent employment. I worked for Laker Waterbeds which is how/where I met and married Jerry Gipe. Jerry worked for a waterbed manufacturer called Osage Woodcrafts, and I met him when I picked up stock for our store. We were married in 1988, so our 30 Year anniversary is coming up this September! We have one grown daughter and two beautiful grandchildren.
After Laker I worked at Croft Trailer Supply, a job I really enjoyed. I am now employed by AT&T and have been for the last eighteen years. Okay, moving on to my family’s love of the German Shepherd breed. The first shepherds my family had was when I was small, so I don’t remember much about them except their names were Jack and Jill. The first shepherd we had as a married couple was a pup I bought for Jerry’s birthday. He was a gorgeous coated male named Grizzley Bar. He was Jerry’s travelling companion and they were inseparable. Griz was lightning fast. When we were driving around on our lake property he would jump up and snatch a horse fly out of the air and land right back on the tail gate of the truck without ever losing his balance. Horse flies are the fastest flying insects with speeds up to 90 mph, but Griz could spot one headed toward us and know when and where to grab it, he was amazing! He was also a clown and liked acting silly, his favorite way to tease me was to run up behind me, give my ponytail a good yank, then take off before I could retaliate, lol.
When Grizzly was about four, Jerry gave me a female shepherd pup for Mother’s Day. I named her Gipe’s Engle Frauline hoping for a gentle angelic dog. She was an angel, a guardian angel, who loved and took care of our family better than Nana from Peter Pan. She was my right arm and my heart. Angel’s sire was a 2nd generation German import, and from what I can now safely assume was a great working line. She had an extremely high play drive and was so intuitive and intelligent.
The years she was with us were when our daughter was young, and on the no school/snow days we felt it was safe to leave our then 10-year-old daughter with her and Grizzly. I would leave in the morning and tell Angel to watch the kid. Angel would trot into Jen’s bedroom and lay down on the floor by her bed and she was “On Duty” until we got home at night. She did her job so well that on more than one occasion Jen would call me at work and ask me to tell Angel to leave her alone, stating that she couldn’t even go to the bathroom by herself!
Angel had many talents besides babysitting, she mothered every dog that came to live with us, she would nip me on the nose if she ever caught me crying, she carried groceries for me, and had her own little suitcase that she would carry to the car and then into Grandma’s house. She was a great Frisbee dog and loved the water. She wore a harness at the lake and would leap off the dock to “save” our daughter and friends by circling them until they would grab the short leash so she could drag them to shore. If no one was out in the water to save, she would drop a stick off the dock then jump in after it. She was big and bold and so confident. Gabe, my little mustang horse, would follow her anywhere, which was so helpful when he was green broke. Angel also taught him that he could swim with her in the lake. The three of us had so much fun together. She protected us when we rode by not letting other loose dogs get near us. I never saw her get into a fight, chase, or even growl at other dogs, but when those dogs would come running up barking and get close she would block their path, and then they seemed to decide they weren’t that interested in us after all and go back the way they came. I never did figure out how she managed that. She had such a way about her that she made everyone she cared for feel safe.
Angel developed breast cancer when she was 9 years old, she survived and went on to live another 3 years. She passed over the Rainbow Bridge at 12+ and took a big piece of me with her. I was devastated and mourned her loss a long time. She was more than just a dog, it is still so hard, even 8 years later, to write about her death.
Angel “Dock Diving” Summer of ’97
Angel playing Front Yard Frisbee - 2003
Currently, I have a dark little female whom I named Brunhild Armina. Her German name means dark, noble, warrior maiden. I gave her that name because she seemed so timid and afraid when we got her. She was given to me by a friend as a year old pup, the runt of her litter and out of a backyard with no real life experience. It took time, but Armina is not the dog she started out to be, she is no longer frightened by the unknown. She is 8 years old now and has the sweetest, gentlest of doggy souls. In some ways she is so different from my first girl, but no less intelligent or loyal. She also is a great lake dog, she loves swimming and running with Gabe the horse. She and I are new to the dog show world, but looking at her champion lines, it seems safe to say it is in her blood. She gets excited when we go to doggy school, and really seems to enjoy strutting around the show ring. She learned so much so fast that she astounded me.
Last year was our first year to belong to the German Shepherd Club of Greater Kansas City, and the Greater Kansas City Dog Training Club. We took classes and entered local trials at novice levels and we were thrilled to not only qualify but took home three 1st prize ribbons, a couple of 2nd, as well as a 3rd and a 4th one too! We are not sure how it will go this year, but we had a great first year putting 3 titles under our belt/collar, so I guess we have been bitten by the show bug!
Beginner Novice 1st Place, August 2017
For us, the German Shepherd dogs live up to everything we’ve ever read about the breed. While their personalities can be so different, each one that has lived with us has embodied everything they were bred for, companionship, loyalty, intelligent self-thinkers, real family members every single one. We have our 5th shepherd dog in form of a MOGS rescue, a real “wild child” we are taming. I imagine there will always be a German Shepherd living in our home.
