Page 174 - Showsight April 2013

When Standard Schnauzer lovers
gather at Schnauzapalooza it won’t take
long before the stories of the breed’s
exploits fill the group with laughter and
amazement. The pet sitter who left two
Standards unattended in a yard for sev-
eral hours and returned to find that mole
excavation had turned a beautiful lawn
into a Martian landscape (with moles
neatly piled on the patio). The breed’s sec-
ond black AKC champion escaped from
a show and was found 18 months later
“joyously” leading a pack of feral dogs in
the Chicago stockyards. Tales of homes
and vehicles protected from thieves and
children loyally escorted are too numer-
ous to be surprising. Standard Schnau-
zers have been trained to detect bombs,
cadavers, cancer and missing people.
Standards have taught themselves to alert
their humans to medical issues in dogs
and people, remind them that faucets
were left running outside, pick their own
fruit, find dogs and children who are late
for dinner, teach toddlers to stand, train
cats and gather field data for researchers.
If there is a job that is important and your
Standard knows about it, then the odds
are good they will try to find a way to
help you with it. Particularly if you recog-
nize that they are offering help and praise
them for it. If you are alone and 8 months
pregnant when fifty 200- to 300-.lb sows
break out of their barn and head for your
garden, then there is no better dog to
have on your side, even with no formal
herding training.
These stories are true and illustrate
the breed’s essential character. Standard
Schnauzers are bold, intelligent, inde-
pendent and self-motivated. They are
extremely trainable, but do not tolerate
drilling and can be easily bored. Stan-
dards are fantastic with children, but
without proper supervision they could
easily become partners in crime and cre-
ate an unfathomable level of destruction.
They protect their family and property,
but their good judgment means that they
rarely misjudge new acquaintances. Their
pursuit of vermin borders on holy war,
and to own a Standard is to expect a few
casualties brought to you for comment
and approval.
Standard Schnauzers are incredibly
healthy with very few inherited health
problems. Farm dogs were not coddled
and only healthy dogs that could live on
limited rations survived. Even pampered
show dogs were, and are, tough and har-
dy. Many years ago a pregnant bitch got
loose at a dog show in Chicago, was lost,
and feared dead. She was found weeks
later after she’d dug her own den, deliv-
ered and started raising six healthy pup-
pies (one of which is behind many of the
dogs showing today). Standard Schnau-
zers are tough and self-sufficient. A sense
of fair play is woven into their fiber and
once you set rules you must be consistent.
Under the skin of every Standard lurks a
sheriff ready, willing, and able to enforce
the rules and bring order. Don’t expect
them to tolerate chaotic households, rude
dogs or sketchy visitors. So how do you
harness all this potential? There are many
organized activities that today’s Stan-
dard Schnauzer fancier can do with their
canine partner. Standards will be at work
in the herding, obedience, rally and agil-
ity rings at Schnauzapalooza this May.
The first challenge of herding with
Standards is that they are not convinced
you are needed and, in fact, sometimes
you are not. Standard Schnauzers are
capable of taking the flock out in the
morning and collecting them at night
with no human help. The other prob-
lem encountered training the breed,
Herding comes naturally to a Standard.
“Under the skin of every Standard lurks a sheriff
READy, wiLLiNg, AND AbLE
To ENfoRCE THE RULES AND
bRiNg oRDER.”
“The first challenge of herding with Standards is that
THEy ARE NoT CoNviNCED yoU ARE NEEDED
and, in fact, sometimes you are not.”
174 • ShowSight Magazine, April 2013