Yesterday was the 10th Southern California Jindo Picnic. This time it was located at Griffith Park's Mineral
Wells Picnic Area. Alas, unfortunately, I gave one long-timer bad directions and told him Mineral
Springs Picnic Area. The rescue website had exceeded the monthly bandwidth quota and so I went by memory.
Apparently, I'm getting older and my memory is not as locktight as it used to be. I took two wrong turms even though I've been to this site about 7 times.
People flowed into and out of the picnic at different times. That was actually okay since we didn't have a Canine Good Citizen test scheduled (nobody RSVP for that) and it was discovered that the jumps for the agility course had been damaged while in storage.
So we ended up just chatting about Jindos, which is the core purpose of the picnic.
I had bought three dogs to the picnic. PoongSoon the 2 year old Poongsan, HwangYoung the 10 month old male Jindo, and JinHo the 5 month old male Jindo. (I'll give an intro about HwangYoung and JinHo in a later post.)
At the picnic, I got a chance to see my former foster dog, Gracie, again. She grew into a pretty girl dog although not quite standard Jindo. Nice thick fur with good length, pretty eyes, and rounded ear tips. HwangYoung thought she was quite attractive and flirted his teenage heart out to her. (Sorry, HwangYoung, she's still quite spayed.)
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| HwangYoung and Gracie (now named Daisy) |
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| HoSu and JinHo |
JinHo, in the meantime, was placed in the same x-pen as HoSu. He knew she was "FEMALE" as well. During the picnic, he made sure to practice his newly-found skill of peeing with his leg up. Perhaps in Winter 2014, he and HoSu might be bred together, pending health checks of course.
It seems almost strange to talk about a future litter at a picnic hosted by a Jindo rescue, but one thing I realized from talking with the folks that came is that the Jindo breed has lost its way in the U.S.
There were several folks that had owned good Jindos before, and their current Jindos just did not compare to them. Just not as smart and not very lively.
One person had a dog that bit people 5 times before Animal Control put down the dog. It might have been hypothyroidism, but about 15 years ago, a Jindo that bit a family member with no good reason was disowned as a purebred Jindo. Biting was abnormal. Now too many people are accepting it as normal and won't put down such a dog.
It used to be common knowledge that you just don't board a Jindo at a trainer's and expect the trainer to "fix" the dog. Throwing money at the trainer is no substitute for learning how to train a dog yourself.
One family had "put in an order" for a Jindo Ranch dog. I don't know if they understood what they were getting into and whether they absorbed what they saw when they saw Gracie who was from Jindo Ranch. I had put in lots of time socializing Gracie and taking her to Puppy Class. It is lots of work to bring such a dog up to the level of what a well-bred Jindo would be by default.
There was one female Jindo there that should have been well-bred. I knew much of the maternal line and met the dogs in person but several unwise decisions tipped her over into an aggressive dog that no dog or person could approach. She was very much over her threshold and resorting to "a best defense is an offense". She even lunged at PoongSoon who was just minding her business while laying on the ground. It was the first time I've seen PoongSoon get irked enough to stand up to her full size and respond with her own growl.
This could have been addressed earlier if there were other experienced Korean breeders that could have provided GOOD instructions, but pretty much the better Korean club is dead and the other one has "issues".
