A bit of Keeshond History and other Important Stuff

Jada here again. Yeah, I know you're all anxious to hear from Tyssen, but you'll just have to wait awhile longer. Uh...he's still trying to compose his thoughts. Yeah, that's it. And he has no idea I'm doing another post so soon, so he doesn't realize he's missing out right now. So I'll just let him lay in a coma in front of his fan awhile longer.

A few things to get straight right off the bat. We're Keeshonds and proud of it! Most folks have no idea what a "Keeshond" is when they see us. We hear the craziest things out there. Some think we're a Chow, which distresses us. I guess they see a bunch of fur and a curled tail and something in their brain screams CHOW!!! Recently we've been hearing "Siberian Husky", which really annoys me. A HUSKY? Puh-lease. Just imagine if someone mistook YOU for a chimpanzee, orangutan or ape and you'll see what I mean. Not that there's anything wrong with Chows, Huskies or Apes....(sheesh...I despise political correctness and can't believe I'm saying that!)

I had Joni make this graphic up...not to belabor the point, but this is just something that I've got to get off my chest. These are from the AKC site.
Notice the differences? Seems pretty obvious now, doesn't it?So to get this straight....we're not an oddly colored Chow and we're not a long-haired Husky.

Okay. Now back to our Keeshond subject. We hear our breed name mispronounced ALOT, but have learned to live with it, although our people will still try to correct your pronunciations. Out of the 350 plus purebred dogs, the Keeshond has the most mispronounced name. "Case-hond", "keesh-hond", and even "keesh-hound" (the most popular) are all improper pronunciations. The proper was of saying our breed is "kayz-hond" or "kayz-hawnd" . The plural version is "kayz-honden" or "kayz-hawnden".

We're generally a medium sized dog with a plush double coat of black and silver fur, a ruff around our necks, and a curled tail. We originated in Germany and were originally called a German Spitz. We're closely related to other German Spitzs like the Pomeranian and Wolfspitz.

Basically, we're an old breed and one of the few that's always been so awesome as to always have been bred to be companions and watchdogs. We have no real career other than that. We're not hunters or killers, we see no sense in chasing sheep and cows around (eww - and step in sheep or cow doo-doo?) or to retrieve a bunch of dead ducks (hate feathers in my mouth. Actually, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm scared to death of ducks, dead or alive!) and have no real desire to hunt criminals and make arrests. I think it's the food thing....maybe I'd consider it if there was FOOD involved, but from what I hear these dogs love doing this for what they consider "fun" - so they can have it. We much prefer to hang around our people.

My ancestors in the 1600s and 1700s were used as watchdogs on boats, barges and farms. In Germany they were known as "Wolfspitz", in France they were known as "Chiens Loup", in Italy they called us "Lupini" (hey, sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?) and in Holland they called us Keeshonds. That name came from the 18th century Dutch patriot named Cornelis (Kees) de Gyselaer, who was the leader of the Dutch rebellion against the House of Orange. Lots of political stuff here, which I won't bore you with (yawn!). We became the rebels symbol and when our side lost, we almost disappeared since folks didn't want to be associated with the losing side's symbol anymore. I find this rather pathetic, but that's the way it was.

The word "keeshond" is a two part word. "Kees" is the nickname for Cornellius de Gyselaer, and "hond" is the Dutch word for dog. Not too exciting in terms of how our name came around, but that's the history. Some also referred to the Keeshond as the "Dutch Keeshond", the "Dutch Barge Dog" and the "Smiling Dutchman". (I dunno why, but I kinda like the last one.)

Later, in England, when people started reviving our dwindling breed, we were sometimes called silly things like "Fox Dogs" and the ghastly "Overweight Pomeranian". Not that I have anything against Poms, but geez, can you come up with something better than being a big fat pom?

Let's see....what else can I say about us. We're quite brilliant and mischievous. We're very playful and quick learners, but we also get bored quickly. This is a trait of a highly intelligent dog! We're not one of those herding dog types who can do the same thing over and over and over again and be happy doing it. We GET IT quickly, but if you keep making us do it we get a bit bored and come up with antics to amuse ourselves and befuddle you. Hey, gotta keep things interesting, right?

Along those lines, we have a tendency to be known as "stubborn". We all laugh at that. Again, we're just trying to amuse ourselves and watch our people's antics as they try to overcome our "stubborn-ness". For instance - we understand everything people say, but sometimes it's just fun to hear them give us an order and we just sit there and act as if they're speaking an ancient form of Latin we've never heard before. "Huh? What's that mean?"
But the other part of this reason for them thinking we're "stubborn" is that we're so incredibly SMART we figure we know better (and we do!). We also prefer the request to make SENSE! So if they say "come", my first thought might be more along the lines of "WHY?". Surely they can tell me where I'm at and not make me walk all the way over there! Sometimes people just don't make much sense to me! I figure this is much smarter than some brainless dog that will drop everything on a dime and obey mindlessly.

Jada's Introduction to our Blog

Hey there - I'm Jada and I'm one of the Spoiled Rotten Keeshonds. I'll introduce the other one in a minute, but me first. My whole name is "Spirit's Ready for Prime Time", but that's just too long for folks to say each time, so they call me "Jada" for short. My person I live with is Joni...or so I hear. I really don't call her that, but everyone else does for some reason. I'm not sure where she got "Jada" from, or what it means.....just that "it fit", whatever the hell that means.

I've been with her my entire life after I left where I was born in the Spring of 2007. My birth home is a fun car trip away and we go out there every few weeks for a visit and I can run around with my mom, Lucy, and her person, Judy. 'Course, I get to get tortured there by getting my nails done, which I hate, but it goes quick and then I'm off playing and running again. There's a cute furry Keeshond-wannabe (a Pomeranian) there that is in love with me named Reuben, but I pretty much just ignore him.
Anyway, I digress. I'll chat about that more later when I mention all the others that are crazy about me and that's a pretty long list.

When I came to live with Joni she had another furry critter there named Beckett. He wasn't a Keeshond, but was a curmudgeon of a Sheltie named Beckett. I'm told that if he'd met me when he was younger he'd have been crazier about me, like that's a big surprise. Did I mention everyone loves me? All I did was pretty much annoy him, but he grew to be quite fond of me. He taught me how to be nice, gentle and sweet......and I missed him when he was gone a year later.

Wasn't I an ADORABLE puppy?

Okay, a little about me. I'm simply adorable....everyone says so. I'm brilliant and have so much fun doing everything Joni wants me to do and then hearing everyone gush over my brilliance when they see this. I'm incredibly sweet.....and will do anything to make people happy. I like nothing more than being around people and hearing them gush over me. It's even better if they have FOOD! Did I mention FOOD is one of my favorite things? I'll do just about anything for FOOD, even make a fool of myself. I'll twirl for food....I'll roll over for food....I'll go to any lengths to get food! I get treats everyday...and even more when we do agility. Don't tell Joni, but I'd do agility for nothing, but if she thinks I need food for incentive or rewards...well, I certainly won't let her know differently! This summer she's been getting Popsicles, which I'm crazy about now. She'll give me a piece of it each time. Boy, I can't think of anything better in the summer! Maybe watermelon - that's a close call.

I'm an awesome Therapy Dog also! Who wouldn't like going to a place where EVERYONE'S attention is on ME and my every blink of the eye has them wanting to pet me and give me food? And I make the sad and sick people feel a little better about life, and that's fun also. Not as fun as food, but it's right up there. Unfortunately we haven't had time to do alot of Therapy visits for awhile...just been too busy with Agillity! But we'll get back into it again.

For awhile it was just me and Joni, but we kept pretty busy. She got me involved in this crazy thing called "Agility" when I was a puppy. What fun that is - running around like crazy with my person, jumping, leaping, going thru tunnels and ramps and jumps. I was pretty happy with life just like that....but then she brought home my little brother. Yes, he's really my little bro. We have the same mom but different dads. We look alot alike, but he's got this huge monster head and is now taller than me, so it's easy to tell us apart. Most folks can't....but I figure they're just a bit dense to not see the difference.

This new fellow was an adorable fun little furball to have around and we bonded from the first moment we met. His name is "Tyssen", which means "firebrand". His whole name is "Spirit's Light My Fire", but he answers to Tyssen, Tyce, Ty, Ty-Boy, and any other nutty way of saying his name. He even answers to the occasionally used "Monster" for some reason. He's not as smart as me, but then who is? But all in all, he's great to have around. Ty does agility also, but he's also conceited and vain about his appearance, which works for him since he goes to dog shows and someone decides if he walks around a ring and looks good doing it and gives him ribbons. Sounds easy, but they say it's tough. Apparently he's good at it, since he came home one day last fall from a dog show and insisted on being called "Champ". Yeah, right.....like I'm going to call him THAT! That's all his ego needs to hear! I just wrestled him to the ground and showed him who was really boss and since he's such a wimp, he said I didn't have to call him that. He's a pretty good little brother...just needs to be kept in his place.....which is ME being in charge. Little twerp. Typical little brother sort of stuff, though, I suppose. He'll be on this blog also...but for now I'm hogging the first post!

Oh...he did ask me to mention that his whole name is "AKC/UKC Champion Spirit's Light My Fire". Okay. I won't call him Champ, but I guess I can mention it! Secretly I'm pretty proud of him...but don't tell him that! His ego would explode! I can't wait to see what he's like when he starts adding Agility titles to his name. I have bunches of agility titles, but you don't see ME bragging about them in this first post! I've plenty of time for that!

This photo above was from shortly after we met. As you can see, we were pretty tight from the get-go.

We -- what? Okay....I was just informed we're going for a long walk so I'll have to continue this later! Who hoo! Maybe I'll get to visit some of those cats outside! Maybe Tyssen will see a squirrel and be happy attempting to climb a tree and catch it! OR maybe someone outside will have a TREAT for us! The possibilities are endless! Later!