These pictures were taken on the first evening we spent together. She was 46 pounds when I picked her up. She’s quite the spinner in her crate 🙂
These pictures were taken on the first evening we spent together. She was 46 pounds when I picked her up. She’s quite the spinner in her crate 🙂
Love her dark eyes and that intense glare!
David, you will find that most of us are addicted to this blog. That’s to you, I need to get in an extra A-T Bloggers Anonymous meeting. 😉
I’m sorry to feed your habit, but glad you’re enjoying it at any rate 🙂
She is absolutely beautiful! You can see the intense intelligence in those dark eyes and I love her busy-long-dangerous tail! 🙂 Thank you for sharing the pictures of our hero dog!
I meant to say “bushy” not busy tail. Although her tail probably does get rather busy when she is working.
She is intense and then some. She had such a beautiful tail, and then it got shaved because she popped it in her crate (coming up in episode 9 BTW) and we shaved it so we could apply a proper bandage.
How old was she when you picked her up? She looks young. She was so lean, I think that I am seeing her ribs in that 3rd picture. She’s beautiful, and seems so calm, in spite of the fact that you are just picking her up for the first time. She has a great temperament, doesn’t she? I love those long tails! My young “Dutch” is 5 months now, and looks like a perfect but miniature GSD. I am still getting used to that tail. When I was taking him in to a shop that had an automated door closure, I realized just in time that due to my slow pace with him, his tail was almost caught in the door as it closed! Everyone, watch out for those long tails – don’t let them get injured!!!
Fama was almost 4 when I got her, and very thin. At her best in Afghanistan, she was 82 pounds, and could make it over an 8′ barrier with some work. She put on 35 pounds of muscle in 5 months.
The thing with Fama is she IS really calm, until she’s NOT. She’s one of those dogs with an OFF switch, which was really nice, once I located it 🙂
Her temperament is perfect for me. We match up very well. She is a really hard dog, probably the hardest female I have been around. I have never seen her fearful, and believe me, there are times she should have been scared. She is also super focused, when it’s time to work she is all business, which is very much like me. But after work when we were just hanging out, she was like a puppy, rolling around like a goofball, muzzle punching me with toys to get me to play and stealing my hats.
Fama went almost everywhere with me while we were deployed, and I know first hand what a challenge it can be to keep a dogs tail safe, especially in an armored vehicle full of people and weapons.
Thanks for the pics David! I love them… especially that first one where her look says, “Yeah, I am smarter than you are. What are you going to do about it?”.
LOL!
Lee, that is so true. You hit the nail on the head with that look. I had to earn every drop of respect from that dog. I had to prove to her that I knew what I was doing, and that I couldn’t be pushed around.
That is exactly how my Kira was with me. She wasn’t going to work with me or for me until I proved myself to her. Kira is always smarter then I am.
Ain’t it great!
After we were out of school, I could always push Fama way harder in training than the other 5 dogs I was working with. She is such an independent problem solver that I could really expect a lot from her, and because of that, our capabilities grew rapidly once we could train on our own. I love the challenge that an intelligent dog poses.