Hi! I'm new to this forum and I am really excited to see a whole message forum dedicated to newfies!
We currently have a newfie. We love him. He's from a BYB. But he has been the BEST dog. We are looking at getting another newfie next summer. I contacted another breeder who shows her dogs and is not a BYB. She said she evaluated the temperament of the dogs before they were selected for homes to make sure the right dogs were going into the right homes. So this got me thinking- since she's looking at temperament anyway, maybe this time around I could train a therapy dog. I had lots of fun training my current newfie just in basic things. But I had a couple questions:
1. I have three children. They participated in the training of Rez. I know therapy dogs need to be trained really well. My children are young (11, 9 and 8).. can they somehow "ruin" this training? We have lots of kids in and out of our house currently with friends visiting, etc.
2. I researched a bit on the web but I was confused by what I was reading.. does someone help you train a therapy dog or do they only evaluate?
3. Is one sex better than another for therapy work? Just out of curiousity. I have only ever had male dogs and cats (ok, I've had two female cats out of the many we have owned).
I always thought it would be fun to raise service dog puppies but this seems even better since we want another newfie and I'll get to participate in the therapy with the dog (I would love to have a dog that goes to children's hospitals or participates in reading programs).
Anyway... I'd love to hear any advice from those who have trained therapy dogs- especially newfies and especially if you have children in the home.
Thank you!
We currently have a newfie. We love him. He's from a BYB. But he has been the BEST dog. We are looking at getting another newfie next summer. I contacted another breeder who shows her dogs and is not a BYB. She said she evaluated the temperament of the dogs before they were selected for homes to make sure the right dogs were going into the right homes. So this got me thinking- since she's looking at temperament anyway, maybe this time around I could train a therapy dog. I had lots of fun training my current newfie just in basic things. But I had a couple questions:
1. I have three children. They participated in the training of Rez. I know therapy dogs need to be trained really well. My children are young (11, 9 and 8).. can they somehow "ruin" this training? We have lots of kids in and out of our house currently with friends visiting, etc.
2. I researched a bit on the web but I was confused by what I was reading.. does someone help you train a therapy dog or do they only evaluate?
3. Is one sex better than another for therapy work? Just out of curiousity. I have only ever had male dogs and cats (ok, I've had two female cats out of the many we have owned).
I always thought it would be fun to raise service dog puppies but this seems even better since we want another newfie and I'll get to participate in the therapy with the dog (I would love to have a dog that goes to children's hospitals or participates in reading programs).
Anyway... I'd love to hear any advice from those who have trained therapy dogs- especially newfies and especially if you have children in the home.
Thank you!