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(barking)
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- My name is Annie and I have a Belgian malinois
named Jacks, he's about three years old.
And we do IPO, shichon and so
tracking obedience and protection.
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A malinois is a man's best friend if you
are really into training and if you like working
on training your dog, skills, obedience
and just teaching him behaviors
because they're always ready to work
and will work for extended periods of time,
multiple times a day if you're
that kind of person, which I am.
If you are into police and military type of work,
it's also a good dog for that, very good.
The malinois is one of four variations
of a Belgian type sheep dog.
So, you have the terv which is the one with the long coat.
The groenendael which is black with a long coat.
The laekenois which has the curly hair
and then the malinois which has a short red coat.
Jacks' best characteristics that are common in the breed,
I would say are really high drive, like he'll work
for a ball or a toy, pretty much until he drops
and he loves to work, that's I think
the biggest breed characteristic.
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Jacks' parents, his mother has a French ring brevet.
So, she started out in the French ring
and then was used for breeding
so she didn't really title much beyond that.
And then his dad has an IPO3
and is one of the few dogs that I have ever heard of,
or malinois especially that has a 100 point FH2.
Which is a really advanced tracking title.
Hopefully Jacks will be able to live up to that.
Jacks hasn't competed yet, I've only had him
for about two years, so we're still kind of working
on putting everything together
and making sure it's just right before we get out there.
Compared to a show line malinois,
Jacks is a little bit long in the body
and his head isn't totally conical wedge shape.
But he fits the standard roughly.
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The AKC standard calls for a very square dog,
which Jacks is not he has a really long body.
So, that would be something that you
don't really see in the AKC ring.
And his coat is a little too dark.
Usually the dogs that you see in AKC
are like a lighter fawn color not so red.
The average size for males is about 55 to 65 pounds.
They should be around 24 to 26 inches tall.
Females you're looking at 49 to 55 pounds
and height 22 to about 24 inches.
The history of the breed, basically the Belgian malinois
started out as just a type, not really so much a breed.
So, before the turn of the century,
it was just really a poor mans farm dog in Belgium
and then at the turn of the century
when dog shows kind of became a thing,
that's when people started focusing more on
this specific breed as a breed.
Until then it was just really an all around farm dog.
It wasn't specifically a herding dog
but there was a fair amount of herding
but it wasn't like a sheepdog, like a border collie
type dog, just meant to do more all purpose farm dog.
But I'm sure herding was a pretty big part of that.
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Since the farm dog days, the breed has really progressed
into the premier working dog.
Their inexpensive compared to other
working breeds like a German Sheppard.
They are really hardy, they're easy keepers,
they don't have a ton of health issues within the breed
and they're really bred for work, they work really hard,
they work really long, that's what they really excel at.
And what they've been really hound for.
I know that a lot of malinois breeders consider this dog
a very poor choice for a pet, I'm a little bit on the
fence about that because I think they can, under the right
circumstances make excellent pets.
But you really have to be the kind of person
who has really good leadership skills with the dog
and you have to want an active dog.
They're definitely not gonna want to sit on your
couch all day without doing anything else.
I mean, mine does like to sit on the couch
but we do a lot together.
And you really have to be the kind of person who enjoys
training, you have to want to work with your dog a lot.
That will make your life easy with a malinois, or easier.
(laughing)
Moving forward I really hope that Jacks and I
can do well competing, we'll see.
We're still in training pursing shichon or IPO.
I'm going to try our BH first coming up, hopefully soon.
We haven't done anything yet so fingers crossed
but I'm really excited, I think he's promising
and I hope we can do well together.
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