Kreative Kennels interview published by
"Das Schäferhund Magazin" Germany, February 2010.

Hello!

I am Michael Osmundson, president and CEO of Creative Genetics of CA, Inc, located in the San Joaquin Valley of northern California. We are 99 miles east of San Francisco, or 85 miles south of Sacramento. Creative Genetics is known worldwide for inventing the ProCross system for breeding better dairy cows, by using a three breed rotation. For over forty years we have been improving the genetics of dairy cattle by using a progeny testing system. Creative Genetics is the mother company of Kreative Kennels.

We employ fifteen full-time people for the primary purpose of producing police dogs. This is a story of how we became interested in the German Shepherd working line dog.

Years ago we helped a friend who had a huge problem; he had no money to repay us. So one day, he sent us his best young female pup, a working line German Shepherd, as a token of his thanks. Lady grew up to be a very protective, tough, hard, police type dog! We checked into her pedigree and found some of the top dogs in the world. Her mother was Xyra von den Wannaer Hohen from Germany. In her father’s pedigree was Querry von haus Antverpa, Yoschy von der Dollenwiese, Quasy von der bosen Nachbarschaft, and Aly vom Vordersteinwald. Lady was one of the best police dogs ever and died at fi ve years of age while working. It was a very sad day, but that was what was needed to start a business known as Kreative Kennels.

We started searching in Germany and the Czech Republic for people who we could trust so we could find dogs for our breeding program. Those people have done a great job in fi nding excellent dogs for our program. Our breeding goals are to breed many top police-type dogs per year.

We want to breed dogs that are very dominant and serious with veryhigh drives and active aggression. In order to achieve our goals we progeny test all of our stud dogs and breeding females. By this I mean that we select our stud dogs and get one litter from them. We test all of the pups in the litter. If the litter has a very high percentage of good pups, we use the stud dog again. If they are good, he now becomes a full time stud dog. If not, he is eliminated from our breeding program. The same is true with the breeding females. The pups are tested for the following traits: confidence, prey drives, aggression, natural protection instincts and mental alertness. We prefer that a pup has these traits naturally.

We are breeding police dogs, not top sport dogs. Many traits are the same, yet some are distinctly different. We are not concerned about high scores nor perfection on any one skill that a dog has; however we are concerned that a dog is hard enough, fast enough, strong enough, clear-headed and controllable.

We need a dog that is born with high levels of confidence, aggression and natural protection. We like dogs that are almost too hard to handle. It is easier to slow a dog down with obedience training, than it is to build a dog up who does not have any aggression or confidence.

Most of our dogs are sold as police dogs and most of our customers do not care if the dog has a title or not; they just want a dog who is willing to protect his handler and is willing to apprehend the bad guy. We also want a very healthy dog with good hips and elbows.

We feed our dogs a raw meat diet consisting of 45% beef, 45% ground chicken leg quarters, 8% dried beet pulp soaked in milk, and 2% salmon oil or flax seed oil. Since switching to a raw meat diet, our dogs have had consistently higher energy levels and fewer health problems.

At Kreative Kennels, all pups are born at our breeding farm. We employ a full time health care manager and puppy caretaker. The first 8 weeks they are in the care of the health care manager where they are vaccinated, wormed, evaluated and played with. The health care manager is also responsible to observe and record everything she sees about each pup in every litter. She notes the confidence, protectiveness and aggression as well as health issues of each pup in the litter.

At nine weeks of age they are moved to the police dog training kennel where the health care manager starts to train them with such things as environment, ball play, tug work and some simple obedience. The most important factor in training our young dogs is never use negative reinforcement. We use positive praise for everything in our training of young dogs. We never close a training session with a negative feeling; it is always ended on a high note. Our trainers believe that it is important to take the training one day at a time and remember that you cannot make a puppy into a dog overnight.

After the pups have changed their teeth, we move on to tugs, puppy pillows and a soft sleeve. Once they are biting on the sleeve, we make changes that will improve their confi dence, their protectiveness and their aggression. At the end of their police training, a dog must bite on the hidden sleeve while the decoy is firing a 38 caliber pistol overhead. The dogs cannot be equipment oriented. They are also trained for building searches, vehicle searches and bite work inside a vehicle. The dog cannot hesitate while accomplishing these tasks.

We work half the dogs in our kennel every day with them having access to exercise runs on the off day. All dogs in the kennel are assigned to one handler and multiple decoys. By working with a single handler, the dog completes his police training in a timelier manor. We think contact with people is very important to a dog. Since we employ fifteen full time people, each dog comes in contact with various people during the day. Twice each week, they are taken from the kennel site to a new environment to build up confidence and environmental skills.

There are several things that scare me about the development of German Shepherd Dog in recent years. My biggest concern is the over-angulation of the rear end of the dogs. I have seen this in dairy cattle and it definitely shifts the weight to the rear of the animal; therefore, it wears out the hips and elbows faster. Our goal is to have little angulation with a medium sized, strong, muscular dog, more like the real wolf. Other concerns include breeding soft dogs and inbreeding. We are very grateful to all past and present breeders of the German Shepherd Dog for giving us such a great dog. We have learned much from talking to many breeders and searching the websites. We are simply stating facts in this interview not wishing to sound boastful; we are learning more all the time from other breeders.

Mike Osmundson

German Shepherd Puppies for sale I Personal Protection Dogs for sale I Famiy Protection Dogs for sale I Family Companion German Shepherds for sale I Green German Shepherds for sale

 © 2006-2025 Kreative Kennels. Any reproduction of any part of this website is strictly prohibited. If you wish to use any of the content of this site, Please contact us at npalffy@kreativekennels.com