The Dogs

September 2010
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True to our family form, my cousin is a dog lover. However he has gone a different direction than sweet, cuddly golden retrievers. Several years ago Ray Johns, the USAF General, gave Mike a Malinois. The breed had been taking over guard duties around the world from German Shephards and Rottweilers. Mike fell in love with the dog, and decided that he wanted to breed them in Thailand. So Mike built a kennel, Siam Crown, on his river property, hired one of the best trainers in the world, Bert Kikkert, and started breeding. 6 litters later his kennel is home to world champions and prize winning Malinois. More recently he added a second breed, Dutch Shephard (Dutchy). There are only about 900 in the world, and there were none in Asia.

The other day when I showed up at Mike’s apartment, there were two dogs there: Lucky, a 4 year old Dutchy, and Elvis, a Malinois puppy. The pup was cute, and Lucky was like a huge lapdog. Of course after Mike told me exactly what the breed does, I wondered whether he was licking me or tasting me. But in reality I not only had no fear of this dog, I immediately fell in love with him.

Then this afternoon Bert led Lucky and 3 Malinois through training exercises on the grounds. Holy crap! These dogs are incredibly well trained, and more impressively they are good at what they’re trained to do — guard. They guard people and packages. They escort bad guys. They retrieve tossed-away drugs, bullets, whatever. They perform swimming rescues. The training is the type of protection training that I always imagined it would be — a guy wearing a huge protective suit and a scary dog with its teeth wrapped around the guy’s arm or leg. Below are a few photos. Mike said he’d love to send a puppy home for me. I’m not so sure.

Additional note: I just spent Saturday again with the dogs. 4 pups were sold today (it’s a full-fledged breeding kennel). I’m not sure that the people who bought the dogs are completely aware of what they are getting. I have a great deal of respect for these dogs and the training and I am comfortable around the dogs that have been identified as “house friendly.”