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| Name: |
Torgo
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Age: |
28 months old
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| Gender: |
Male |
Breed: |
German Shepherd |
| Home: |
Maryland, USA
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This
is my German Shepherd, Torgo. He is 28 months old and weighs 105
pounds. He lives with my wife and children in the state of Maryland
in the United States of America. Torgo is a very active dog. He loves
checking out our neighborhood and visiting with the other dogs we
meet during our walks.
One of his most favorite activities is watching what my wife calls
"Torgo TV." What she is referring to is the action that
takes place on our window sill. We have two large windows that run
from floor to ceiling in the front of our house. I always put
birdseed in our feeder, and dry corn on a squirrel feeder I made for
our front yard. This attracts a lot of wildlife to my front yard. But
the real action takes place on my window sill. I grind up peanuts and
mix them with sunflower seeds before putting them on the window sill.
Between all of the food in the yard, we usually attract six or seven
gray squirrels. They always chase one another in the yard, and often
come up on the sill to share the peanuts with the birds. We also have
several chipmunks that visit the sill for food. Torgo loves to sit in
my recliner and watch the action. No matter where we are in the
house, if I say "Are your little friends outside?" Torgo
runs over to the window to watch. If he sees one of his little
friends, he immediately freezes, slows down his breathing, and sneaks
up to the window to watch them eat. He does not bark at them as long
as they sit and eat. But if the squirrel runs off as he approaches,
then he barks and tries to grab them with his paws. When a chipmunk
appears, I refer to them all as "Chippy." He really loves
Chippy. Chippy will sit there stuffing his mouth with food, then he
(or she) runs down the steps of our house and across the lawn,
disappearing into his burrow in the ground. Torgo stares at the hole
intently until Chippy sticks his head up. At this point Torgo's
entire body tenses up and he ducks down behind the sill as he watches
Chippy return for more food. Watching this is really funny.
Torgo is really a special dog. I almost think that he was
reincarnated from a previous dog life where he was trained as a
search dog. Here is what I mean. When he was only twelve months old,
I had him at a local park, training him to walk properly on the
leash, to heel, sit, down, etc. He learned his lessons really fast
and well. While we were walking home one day on a fifteen foot leash,
and at heel, I stopped and Torgo came to an automatic sit as I had
trained him. Then, as a joke, rather than saying "Torgo,
heel" and resuming our walk, I said "Torgo, search."
This is the first time I ever used that word in a command to him.
(Previously I had used other words like "Torgo, helicopter"
or "Torgo, fly" when he was at the sit position, and he
would just look at me like he didn't recognize the word and he
wouldn't move.) But when I told him to search, he immediately jumped
up, ran to the full extent of the leash, and began to smell the
ground as he paced left to right then right to left as we
walked. Astounded at this behavior, I called him back to me,
made him sit, then gave him a "Torgo, heel" command, and he
stepped of at heel. I have not yet tried getting him to search for
anything, but he continues to respond in the same way to that word
and seems to really enjoy searching for whatever he thinks we are
looking for. One day I'm going to get a stranger to give me their
t-shirt or something, have them drive their car to some location, and
then walk somewhere else, and see if Torgo can find them. Who knows,
maybe he used to be a search and rescue dog in a previous life, or
maybe he inherited something from his parents (they were both
Schuthunds).
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