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Photo by: Short Story Photography
We believe dogs possess a spirit, that they feel happiness, sadness, boredom, frustration, loss, fear, joy–the same emotions we experience. We believe that we are responsible for the quality of our dog’s lives. We raise and nurture a limited number of hand-picked, exceptional quality, old-style German Shepherds so that we can promote a high quality of life for each dog and their offspring. All of our dogs have OFA certified hips and elbows.
We do not maintain our German Shepherds in a kennel. Instead, our breeding dogs undergo a through evaluation for the qualities we desire in a German Shepherd. The evaulations are perfromed during their two year education. Once they pass genetic and charcter testing they are placed in loving homes to live their lives bonded to a family. We hold firm to the idea that a dog should live not solely for us, but also for themselves. We reject the business notion that dogs should be raised and maintained in a manner that is unpleasant for the dog.
At Tre’ Good German Shepherds, we raise highly trainable, confident, joyful, intelligent, healthy dogs, who are capable of deeply bonding with their people. By keeping the needs of our dogs foremost, we produce family companions who are not emotionally or mentally stifled. Our dogs are vibrant, alive, and ready to form a solid bond with their new families. We raise our pups using the Tre’ Good method, which utilizes nature, language development and positive reinforcement to develop our puppies and young trained adults. Training consists of games we play with our dogs. Our dogs look forward to their training sessions because we employ patience, clarity, and fun to develop a learning drive. But, just as important, we teach our dogs that we will listen to them. Once a dog understands that s/he is working in a partnership instead of a dictatorship, the amount of effort they put into their education is astounding.
We feed our dogs an organic home cooked, grass-fed meat diet. Because we are environmentally conscious, we buy all of our meat from small family farms that use regenerative pasture management practices. We add blended raw vegetables, sweet potatoes, and other superfoods to their diet and our dogs thrive.
For years we have watched our dogs forage for food on our land. But it wasn’t long after we added our winter location, an old homestead farm, that we actually realized the amount of plant matter dogs naturally add to their diets. On the farm, the dogs forage nuts, fruit, and vegetables from our garden. A dog will enter the garden and walk up and down the aisles until s/he finds precisely the vegetable s/he desires. One day it may be a radish, another day a spaghetti squash, another time it may be a perfectly ripe bell pepper. Once the dog chooses her veggie she parades it around like it was a rabbit. After watching our dogs, we now add a good percentage of vegetables, seeds, and low-glycemic fruits like Acai’, Macai, or other berries to our dogs’ diets. We are strong supporters of raw and home-cooked foods. We personally feed our dogs a lightly cooked-meat, whole foods diet. But we do feel the focus on a high percentage of protein and just a touch of veggies may be off from the dog’s natural diet.
We are continually researching K9 nutrition to keep our breeding dogs in peak condition. We believe excellent maternal and paternal nutrition may protect your pup form the heartbreak of hip dysplasia and the ravages of cancer. We believe that the parents’ diets and specifically the maternal diet during pregnancy does count in the whole picture of your pup’s future health profile. As does the diet you choose to feed your new family member.
As of 2023 Tasha is ten-years-old and is still working full time as a service dog.
Pre-made raw food may be an excellent food option but do your research, the addition of extra vegetables may be beneficial.
We also use a worm composting system to recycle our dog’s waste. We use this system, so our pups poop doesn’t end up encased in plastic in a waste dump.