— The Service —
Rescue & Reset
These abandoned Giants are no longer abandoned when they come to our center.
These abandoned Giants are no longer abandoned when they come to our center.
This is one of the saddest parts about this breed.
There are a number of people who will purchase a Giant Schnauzer like anything else — the moment they see one win Best in Show at Westminster, or the moment they watch a video of our Giant Schnauzers working and doing amazing things. People develop an unrealistic impression that their Giant Schnauzer will do those things simply because they bought one.
The truth is different. The Giant Schnauzer is a beautiful breed that is, by nature, exceptionally smart. I call them the dog with the human brain. Their whole goal in life is to mimic and study the owner-handler. They want to please. They excel greatly across a number of facets that are natural and instinctive to them — herding, protection, and agility ability. They are a powerful breed.
What we have seen over the years is that there is a distinct difference between the show line, the sport line, and the working line. Although they share the same genealogical background, there is a difference in temperament, in mindset, in lineage.
There are beautiful Giant Schnauzers that we have seen that are primarily show, but also have the ability to work in very high-intensity environments. It happens. It is the exception, not the rule — and the exception is where the trouble starts, because people assume the exception is the default.
A few things get said about the Giant Schnauzer that are worth taking seriously.
One. If you do not lead them, they will lead you.
Two. They are a high-energy dog. They can be as destructive as your Malinois or your Shepherds if their mind is not directed.
Three. They are very protective and very intelligent.
Those three things, in the wrong household, are the story of every Giant that ends up in rescue.
It is still a mystery why people purchase Giant Schnauzers with an unrealistic expectation of what they are getting. What they are getting is a high-energy, exceptionally thinking, clearheaded leader in a Giant Schnauzer’s body.
Do not misunderstand me. In many ways they are slow at developing and slow at maturing — but they are not slow at learning. The maturing part is what hits them, because they go through almost the stages of a human child with that kind of intelligence, until maturity kicks in between the ages of two and two-and-a-half years.
Until then, they are literally a goofball machine with some excellent skill sets. Like any other dog, they will make a liar out of you: one day they are doing amazing, the next day they act like they have never seen the exercise before. Unlike other breeds, this dog is slower at maturing — which causes it to give the impression that it is slow at learning. That is completely far from the truth.
The sad part is that we see Giant Schnauzers returned to rescues and neglected because people had a false expectation that this dog would perform like a Malinois or a Shepherd very quickly.
That is the gift of the Shepherd or the Mal. They develop very fast. They are exceedingly smart in their ability to learn — and then they hit a plateau.
The Giant Schnauzer has a steady trajectory. Increasing daily. Increasing weekly. With proper training, proper mentoring, that trajectory does not plateau — it compounds.
Unfortunately, in the age of “I need it now,” people have to get these dogs working because of the ROI — whether it is government or private. They have to produce these dogs quickly.
One of the things that makes us who we are today is our patience — and our comprehensive, analytical understanding of the Giant Schnauzer. That is all we have worked with. For years.
There have been a number of Giant Schnauzers purchased by protection companies that then get sold off early because those companies lose patience with the dog in the protection role.
If you are a mass producer, these are not the dogs for you.
These are the dogs that you sit with. You work on them. You refine them. These are the Rolls-Royces in the industry. The Bentleys. They take time. Engineers work them. Refine them. They have a matrix that very few people outside the Giant Schnauzer community really understand or appreciate.
Because of that lack of understanding, these dogs get rehomed. Placed into shelters. Abandoned. And as a result, they start getting a bad reputation — when the truth is: dogs go back to their instinctive, natural habitat when nobody meets them where they are.
So we appreciate the individuals who are willing to rescue these Giant Schnauzers. For that reason, we have made limited spaces available to reset and recover — or recover and reset — these dogs at a special reduced rate.
That reduced rate entails some pretty serious work from our team.
We take the dogs and we spend time with them — to break them down from the perspective of everything they have been told, everything they have been put through. We erase that by giving them a lot of time to rest and recuperate in a non-stress environment. Good rebalancing of the mind. Development of the body.
So we go into a very complex recovery in their mind, in their body, and in their spirit.
These dogs will eat better than they ever have — guaranteed. The nutrition program we run on our dogs changes them metaphysically within weeks. We get their gut right. We get their mind cleared from all the disastrous things they may have learned, or been sold, by trainers who came by and made big promises to previous owners about how quickly they could get the dog to do something.
There are a lot of dogs that come in with e-collar mental damage.
There are dogs that come in who are afraid to have a pinch collar put on them — because they have been thoroughly abused by other trainers, or by well-meaning but uneducated family members who allowed it to happen to their dogs.
On average it takes us about thirty days to reset a dog behaviorally. In some cases longer. It depends on how old they are, how bad they are, and how deep the damage goes.
What we do is redirect them in their mental mindset. These dogs want to work. So we redirect them by giving them one job at a time — and we build the skill set from there.
That is the question we understand clearly here at the center.
The industry calls them behavioral issues. We call them what they are: traumatic trauma issues. Biting. Dominance. Reactivity. Fear-response. All of the “behavior” problems associated with mistreatment, abuse through K9 trainers, and abandonment — we have handled every one of them.
Reframing the dog is the first thing we do. It changes everything downstream.
Beyond the reset window, there is no definite time. It depends on what the newly adopted family wants for the dog.
Many families want to maximize the dog’s skill set — train it as a protection dog, or as a very obedient companion that can still do some level of protection for the family. This program is set up specifically for adopted families coming from approved Giant Schnauzer rescues or approved shelters.
The fee covers our team members — canine specialists volunteering additional extra time out of their schedules to help work with these dogs. We do not make any kind of profit on this. This is simply about saving and enhancing the breed itself.
If you have a Giant Schnauzer with issues involving biting, dominance, or any of the behavioral concerns associated with mistreatment, abuse from prior trainers, or abandonment — contact us directly. We have handled all those types of situations.
Once we have time to evaluate the canine after intake, we decide whether we are going to take your dog. We do not say yes to everybody who sends us an adopted dog. We qualify the dogs because we do not want issues here that pull us away from our current focus — and because we integrate these adopted dogs with the working-line dogs over time. What we cannot have are conflicts that arise from that integration.
Every dog is evaluated. Every dog goes through medical clearance. Every dog goes through a pre-screening — both in person and online.
That is the K1K9 Recovery & Reset Program.
We will help you finish the job. And if the honest answer is that the dog needs a different setting, we will say so plainly, help you get it there, and treat that as a good outcome — not a failed sale.