Rescue

If you are interested in adopting from RBTF rescue, you will be asked to fill out this form.

Redwood Belgian Tervuren Fanciers actively participate in assisting any homeless, purebred Belgian Tervuren in the Northern California and Nevada vicinity, find a permanent, responsible home.

Current Rescue

Nala

Hey y’all! Nala is back with [Rob & Derede], so please spread the word about her availability: she is really a lovely girl, no longer a climber of fences (knock on chain link), and very easy to live with. She’s not even much interested in our livestock anymore. A complete description, including pictures, is here (on FB), or a google doc link is here. I’ll try to update the google description a bit in the next few days.

+ Working line terv; no papers.

+ Owner surrender at Santa Cruz, California shelter; owner requested no further contact but did tell shelter her birth date (Nov 2020, so she is 4yo). Breeder might have been from TX.

+ 22.5 in. and 55-60 lb.

+ Spayed, all shots and heartworm free. Very healthy, easy keeper.

+ Medium energy: loves racing around the yard and retrieving balls, but settles well in a small area (condo living would be fine).

+ Athletic, environmentally confident, and extremely smart.

+ Gets along well with other dogs and children. Best with larger dogs and sturdy children (not always careful with her body).

+ Very affectionate, wants to be with her people.

+ Operant. Good obedience/nosework candidate.

+ Knows basic obedience (sit, down, stand, come, heel). Recall is good unless there’s something very tempting going on, but we work on that recall many times a day to keep it sharp.

+ If verbally disciplined, she’s very sad. She wants to be a good dog! But she’s also pretty resilient. She’s no shrinking violet.

+ Might have herding ability, but if you’re not planning to herd with her, she’d be better in a home without livestock, because she definitely has interest in livestock. (We live in the country, and there’s livestock everywhere.) Not recommended for off-leash hikes since I could imagine her taking off after a deer, etc.

+ Not a barker, unless she has something to say.

+ Some prey drive; not sure about cats. While we were taking these photos, other people, dogs, and horses were walking close enough for her to be distracted by them, and she was curious and looked around, but stayed engaged.

Her only quirks:

A game she likes to play with new things or big objects: vacuums, shovels, a big box carried into the house. She barks and barks (though she’s generally not a barker), wagging her tail and laughing, and won’t shut up unless you give her a job (like down-stay). She also can be annoying when you’re settling down to watch TV in the evening, or you’re in a zoom meeting (how does she know?), and she wants attention. In these situations, she’s learned barking works, and while generally eager to be a good girl, and easily chastised, when she’s in one of these playful moods, any attention is good attention, and she won’t take “No” for an answer. The solution is giving her a job like down-stay, and then rewarding her for that. In our house, we have her go to her dog bed and lob cookies at her, and then she doesn’t bug us. (But who’s training whom, here?)
A small bit of what one might call “willfulness”: if she doesn’t wanna do something (e.g, go in a crate), she isn’t going to do it. She needs to be incentivized, not bribed, and ideally goes to a home where she’s not just going to sit on a shelf, but where someone would be willing to teach her something for 15-20 minutes a day. (That sort of home is harder to find than you’d think!)

She is whip smart, and picks up on small human cues (like if we’re playing crate games, and she’s in and out and in and out, but then you think to yourself, “This time you’re going to stay in,” she KNOWS and goes the opposite direction. The crating thing is what sunk the home we’d placed her in: they wanted her to crate up easily at night, but she learned that she only went in the crate to stay there for 8 hours, and she began to simply refuse to go. No aggression, but a 60-lb terv who doesn’t want to go into a crate isn’t going to go into a crate.) At our house, she’s crated all night long every night, but we make a point of shuffling her in and out of crates a few times a day every day. She still sort of *thinks* about it when we ask her to crate up the final time at night, but she goes.

We’ll make a video soon.

Rescue Stories

Ruby
I just thought I’d contact you and let you know how Ruby is doing. She fine and is adored by a great many people at the university. I’m attaching a picture taken last week of her with some of our students & faculty. It’s not a showdog picture of her but she does look like her constant happy self, but everyone says she’s a beautiful dog, and she acts like a pofessional on campus, in a meeting or class – almost a mascot.

She is 55 lb., still has her fangs, and she’s eating Natural Balance Fish and Sweet Potato dog food that’s worked out very well. She has to have her anal glands checked and I take her in for a dental every 3-4 months because stuff builds up and makes sores in her mouth.

With that mental picture, I want to thank you and the Rescue Group for this wonderful Terv. She’s absolutely great.

Jean