Wire haired pointed Griffon

[HayleyMarie]

Tell about them. My parents are a tad interested in them at this point in deciding on our next breed. But I really dont know much about them other than they are a sport gun dog. How is their energy level like? ect ect.

I found a breeder by my place that has titles on her dogs. I dont know about health tests yet. But I may go take a look at the dogs sometime this week. Just to maybe get a feel for the breed.

 

[Zhucca]

There is one that comes to my work (dog daycare). She's quite small, and very agile. She's a bit of a anxious thing so I don't think all of her qualities are a breed thing, but she seems like a dopey pointer to me. She's not as serious but also is still high energy, but not as high energy as most of our labs. However, I think if you plugged her in right you'd get the same amount of drive and energy as them.

Thats the only thing I really know about them. I think Romy might have a griffon.. but I forget. Hopefully she sees this thread if she does.

 

[CaliTerp07]

I do agility with two of them (husband and wife own a male and female). I'm not going to say any of these are breed things, since I only know the two of them, but my observations are that they are bouncy bouncy dogs. They don't sit still, they run and jump and leap on equipment, and they are reactive to the other dogs in class. (Lucy hates them, so we have to go outside when they run because they're really over the top).

I'm biased, because their owners are obnoxious as heck so I think I translate my disdain for the people to the dogs, unfortunately. Or maybe obnoxious owners trained obnoxious dogs...

 

[lizzybeth727]

Or maybe obnoxious owners trained obnoxious dogs...

I've seen this happen a lot. In fact the most vocal dog in my agility class was owned by the loudest, most vocal person in the class. :lol-sign: It was very funny when the dog and the human would get annoyed at each other for being so noisy.

 

[Romy]

We have a griff who will be 2 in October.

Where to start....They are VERY active. Griffs are still very much a working breed. When they are working, they are tireless. If you've given them a good hour or two (at least) of exercise they also have a good off switch and settle down nicely in the house, are happy to chill and watch tv.

One thing we discovered about Charlie is that he automatically shifts into working mode when outdoors, and them switches off while indoors. I don't know if that's normal for all griffs. We had a very hard time keeping weight on him until we figured that out, because he would be so active we would keep him outside for hours, thinking he needed to run to tire himself out (talking like, 10 hours or so here). In reality, he only needed 1-2 hours of hard exercise like swimming or hunting in rough terrain, with 1-2 hours of yard time (his yard time is spent in constant motion, as he thinks he's working). For a while we had to crate him for 4-6 hours in the middle of the day so he would stop looking like Skeletor. Now he's older and a little more settled down.

They have incredible pain tolerance. We live on saltwater. Every day we take Charlie swimming, and we go through the cow pasture and under the electric fence to get to the beach. I still remember one time he came out of the inlet soaking wet, walked underneath the wire, and it made a SHHHZZZZZZTT! sound as it touched his back. This same wire will send a steer screaming and stampeding over a hundred yards away. Charlie's skin (but not his body) flinched, and then he wiggled all over like "tee hee! that tickles!"

Because of the pain tolerance, aversives do. not. work. You would have to actually injure the dog in order to make it stop whatever behavior you didn't like. Charlie has strong emotional resiliency too. I mean, dogs have gotten all up in his face and tried to fight him, and he never batted an eye. Never got reactive to them.

Griffs are very good with other dogs. Dog aggression is supposed to be non existent in the breed. Charlie is good with large and small dogs, aggressive and passive, etc.

They are air heads. Griffs listen best when your hands are physically on them. If not, they get distracted by the millions of fascinating smells and sounds and sights all around them. If you can't be touching your griff while working with them, be very animated and peppy to hold their attention (we use something called "the idiot voice").

Charlie is very smart, but was extremely difficult to train. This was because:

1. He was so hyper and spazzy that he would just run through 9 different behaviors before I even had a chance to say "good boy!" for his bottom being on the ground.

2. He is easily distracted and extremely impulsive.

Clickers are magical, mystical tools that work extremely well with griffs. Without it I would never have been able to mark the behaviors I wanted. Now he's fairly well behaved. To someone getting a griff puppy I recommend getting a clicker and working on some very solid attention commands like "watch me". This will help a LOT later on.

He still loves being airborne though. He thinks sit means:

Sit down for 2 seconds and then fly 6 feet straight up into the aaaiiirrrr! He won't jump on you, just..at you. It's like he can't contain his joy or something. And on walks he randomly feels the need to fly into the air. He does keep the leash loose, so that's cool. I think it's a joyful griff thing.

Let me think of more stuff. If you have any specific questions let me know and I'll try to answer as best I can.

 

[Saeleofu]

I know they're freaking adorable

 

[DobeLove]

I don't know a whole lot about them but I have met a few at dog shows and they have all been kind of anxious? I don't know if they were scared but they were kind of trembling and not very confident. They might of just not liked being shown though. They are soo adorable though!

 

[Romy]

They shouldn't be anxious. If they were then either they didn't get socialized or their temperaments were incorrect. Charlie is never anxious. Ever. He kind of reminds us of a chill surfer dude with ADHD. :lol-sign:

Okay, I take it back. If we let the ducks out he FLIPS OUT trying to get to them, and makes that awful high pitched metallic whining sound when he can't. Trembles, etc. I think that has more to do with extremely high prey drive than anxiety though.

He likes other dogs, but he'd rather be with people. After playing with another dog for a few minutes he will ignore them and start following tracks or following us. I think most griffs could be pretty happy as only dogs.

They LOVE to work. Tracking, pointing, hunting, retrieving, are all natural to them. Charlie is an excellent tracker. He is excellent at finding game (every day we go out to the pasture and he points some quail). He taught himself to catch butter clams at high tide. When we send him out he swims out and dives to catch them and brings them back until we make him stop.

They love to please. He would run himself until his heart burst if we asked him to, so we had to learn to be careful what we ask him to do.

 

[HayleyMarie]

Romy: How is their on-off switch. The breeder that I emailed said that they have a fantastic on-off switch when they are inside, but are also very active outside. What my parents are worried about is that they will have too much energy like say a border collie. We live on a farm with rugged land with creeks on both side of our property so I dont think the dog would have any limit to how much running and playing and swimming they wanted to do.

their dogs look fantastic. Their dogs are all OFA and penhip certified as well as NAVDHA trialed and have titles in other trials as well. I think one could easily fit inti our family and I am slightly worried that my parents are going to buy something not from a great breeder so I trying to steer them in the right direction but thats all I can do lol

 

[StillandSilent]

I met my first at daycare this week. Crazy with a capital C! Zeke ran all the other dogs ragged, and then when they were laying down panting, started running laps all by himself!
What a fun dog, though. He was so wiggly and eager to please.

 

[Dizzy]

Also google Korthals Griffon - you should find more sites

 

[HayleyMarie]

Oh they just sound like awesome, fun dogs. The breeder lives like 15 minutes away so maybe I will go talk to the breeders and learn more about the dog even if we decided to go with another breed.

 

[Romy]

Romy: How is their on-off switch. The breeder that I emailed said that they have a fantastic on-off switch when they are inside, but are also very active outside. What my parents are worried about is that they will have too much energy like say a border collie. We live on a farm with rugged land with creeks on both side of our property so I dont think the dog would have any limit to how much running and playing and swimming they wanted to do.

their dogs look fantastic. Their dogs are all OFA and penhip certified as well as NAVDHA trialed and have titles in other trials as well. I think one could easily fit inti our family and I am slightly worried that my parents are going to buy something not from a great breeder so I trying to steer them in the right direction but thats all I can do lol

That sounds like a pretty ideal setup for a griff.

I don't know what we would do with him if we didn't have the water and the pasture. He really loves, almost needs to swim.

Griffs are still pretty rare, so most breeders are good breeders and have health tested, field proven breeding stock. One of the club's missions is to prevent a show/working split from occurring, so we'll see how that goes.

They do have excellent off switches. Charlie comes inside and he just wants to snuggle on the couch, which is gross because he usually smells like dead clams and cow poop. :lol-sign:

I warn you that their feet churn up grass into mud like nothing else. It's incredible. We have a giant mud pit by the garage that used to be lawn just from him running the fence line, and it took less than a week to make it that way. Their feet are huuuuuge.

There are a lot of families I wouldn't recommend griffs for, just because they have such an intense working drive and need to run daily. The average American dog owner would probably get sick of one pretty quickly. I can definitely see how a griff would become very obnoxious if it didn't have appropriate outlets for its energy.

Oh! Another warning. If you get a griff puppy, treat it like a chainsaw.
So far we have lost:

7 garden hoses (he has a hose fetish)
1 blackberry pearl :cry:
1 headlamp
2 flashlights
several bungee cords
a box of candles
the arm of a chair (it got snagged on his tooth while he and Robert were wresting)
Clothes....
Children's toys....
All dog beds we have attempted to give him
A chicken
A kitchen chair.

We've gotten him the durachew nylabones before, and they last about a day and a half before he has the ends so badly chewed we have to take them away. He mainly likes to chew things that smell like us. It's kind of interesting to watch him when he comes inside, because he will track our every step throughout the day, and sniff every thing we have touched, then pick up whatever the last thing we touched was and bring it to us. What a weird guy.

ETA: I've never owned a border collie, so can't compare the two. I will say that they don't. stop. moving. outdoors. But, as long as they get their 1-2 hours of hard exercise early on, they do chill out indoors really well.

ETA ETA: And a trick we've found with Charlie is to ALWAYS feed him before working with him. Otherwise, he's a total spazzy mess that barks erratically and spazzes at everything. When his belly is full he is much better at paying attention.

 

[HayleyMarie]

Ohh the more you talk about charlie the more I want one. I am really going to try and convince my parents to get a griff for the next family dog. I have a couple amazing emails from the breeder that I printed off and will show my parents. And the parents look amazing and have done amazing things.

The breeder actually said that they want to breed to stay the way it is. Both the dog and the bitch they use for the field. EEKKK.. I just want one so badly and they are a fantastic price I was suprised how little they cost.

 

[Romy]

Sweet! That's cool you found some affordable ones, and that they are nearby. Most breeders charge around 1800 for griff puppies.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that they are close working. So, the way it translates out in the field is they run away, stop about 50 feet away, and then zoom back toward you. It's kind of like an invisible leash. Teaching a recall was the easiest thing to teach Charlie, and he's rock solid off leash.

Basically we waited until he started running back to us and we'd shout "come! come! good come!" etc. and then give him a treat. It was just easy because we knew he'd come every time regardless of what we said or did, so he never got reinforced for doing the wrong thing.

 

[CharlieDog]

Haley, you must be crazy. Hearing about Charlie has convinced me I DON'T want one!

lol

 

[Romy]

Haley, you must be crazy. Hearing about Charlie has convinced me I DON'T want one!

lol

To be fair, she also mentioned being interested in ABs, CCs, and airdales in other threads.

They can be pretty intense, but don't have super intense defensive drives like some of those other breeds. Charlie is very protective of the property, but he's also kind of a chicken butt. I think he'd be the type to take a cheap shot bite and run if cornered or confronted by an intruder.

Then again, he's still a puppy. So who knows. I hope we never find out.

 

[moxiecollies]

Yo Romy- Don't forget the muddy mud skipper part! I FINALLY got the outside of my puppy shed cleaned off LMAO...... Did you know there where paw prints almost to the top?!? 8 foot tall shed people. Sheesh, Tiggers' got nothing on Charlie

 

[SelahCowgirl]

New kid here, in fact I joined just to post on this topic.

I have a 15 month old Griffon male who I adore. Most of the things mentioned by the people who have owned them rings true. I can speak for my boy and his dad, but have met few other griffs up here so my experiences are also relative, so please dont take them as fact

Luke has a wonderful personality, he is great in the house when supervised he has a great off switch in his kennel and will zonk out while we are out of the house without him. Out in the field or pasture he is out hunting, his desire to hunt is higher then his desire to please me.

They are a much different personality then any herding or working dog, they are more like a scent hound in their drive once Luke gets a scent for a bird he is after it and it takes a while to call him off of it. Like I said, high prey drive, if my horse are running he is after them trying to get them to chase him and play with him.

As for the hands on when you are working them this can be true, but Luke has a great whoa, down and sit. I can put him on a sit and go do something out of sight for five minutes and come back to release him. they are SMART, the first week we had him Luke knew how to shake, bow and play dead.

They NEED something to expend their energy, so if you live in an apartment or small property know that you will have to take them out on a long working walk every single day, if I skip a hunting session or hike with luke once I know it for the rest of the week. this is ontop of yard work, our obedience or while I change water.

Luke loves to dig, I fill in many deep holes every weekend because he gets the smell of a vole or something and can not let it go until he has eaten it, most breeders will say that they are diggers.

As for chewing, Luke loves to chew I bought him an Orka jack toy that is his favorite, but he will carry around anything he finds to be useful in getting our attention. He does not do well alone in the car for more then 3 minutes, he tore the headliner off the truck and the sunvisor off the van.

They are long lived and relatively healthy, Luke's dad was 15 when he sired him, and still jumping 4 feet in the air. You need to make sure their elbows and hips are clear, as well as the genetic history regarding their eyes.

Talk with 7 or 8 different breeders and see if they think the breed is right for you.