Endeavor History
by Marsha Boggs
In 1994 I learned about a dog sport called Schutzhund. I continued to read about the sport, joined email lists, German Shepherd lists and read everything I could on the sport. Researching for clubs in the area, I found only one, 2 hours away but never seemed to find the nerve to visit. In 1995 the Schutzhund USA North American Championships were held in Albuquerque NM. I went and saw the most amazing dog sport I had seen I and I knew I wanted to try this.
I finally worked up the nerve to call the Albuquerque Working Dog Association club secretary and grabbed a friend and finally visited a local schutzhund club and started trying to learn this sport with my dog. Unfortunately, I had a GSD that inappropriate for the sport and after a two years of fruitlessly trying with him, working with a local K9 cop. I finally bought a dog appropriately bred for the work and joined the Albuquerque Working Dog Association.
I drove to Albuquerque or Los Lunas weekly for 4 years
for training. Since it was so far away I could only go once a week and it was hard to do even that regularly. The rest of the week I was on my own to learn tracking and to do my obedience. If I had a problem I had to work it out on my own, or go home frustrated when I could not figure it out. I was the only person training
schutzhund inmy town and getting together once a week for a quick training session with people 2 hours away was not giving me the support I needed.
I thought I was ready and trialed several times, but each time it was noted by the judge that I trained alone. They were never told this, but I was obvious from my dogs and my performance. Trying to figure out a way to get more help for tracking and obedience and people in general to train with and bounce ideas off of, I decided I should work with and interact with more local dog trainers. No one
was doing schutzhund but me, but we could all learn from and help each other. My local cop friend who would decoy my dog for protection work here in town mainly trained dogs for AKC Hunt Tests and I had learned lots of alternative training methods from him so why not invite all dog trainers no matter what their venue to learn from each other and train together. We could all help each other achieve our goals. Besides, I was tired of all the driving to go to train so far away and my husband was tired of changing
my oil every 6 weeks. So, in 2000 I made the commitment to have a training night. I invited all dog trainers no matter what their venue. I didn't care if it was someone just working with their dog to have a better pet, AKC obedience, Hunt Test, Agility, Herding, Schutzhund, or just people who wanted to hang out.
It was frustrating at the beginning and many times I still trained alone. But, eventually a small core of dedicated trainers began to show up regularly. And, eventually, some of them got bit by the schutzhund bug as they watched me and my dog train for the protection portion of a schutzhund trial.
By 2002, the Wednesday night training group was now mainly training for the sport of Schutzhund, we had our small core of dedicated trainers and we had several people now training schutzhund, we had a new decoy, a guy that came to train for AKC style obedience and got bit, literally by the schutzhund bug. Our new decoy was learning fast, we had several people training schutzhund, so summer of 2002 Endeavor Working Dog Club was born.
We are a close knit training club. We meet up to 5 times a week to train together. We are a happy bunch of people who enjoy each others company and each others successes. We still encourage others to train with us no matter what the venue as we strongly believe in a multidisciplinary approach to training and that we all, no matter our venue, have much to learn from each other. Mostly, we want to have fun and enjoy working with our dogs, because if it isn't fun - why are we here?
Like to be part of our future?