Standard Schnauzers: The Relentless Pursuit of Life

This article was originally published in Showsight Magazine, April 2013 issue.

Standard Schnauzers: The Relentless Pursuit of Life

The Standard Schnauzer was originally developed as an all-purpose farm dog in Germany centuries before organized dog showing. However, all-purpose should not be confused with the cliché “jack-of-all-trades, master of none.”

Indeed, they excel at any task in which they believe. They are incredibly intelligent (nicknamed the dog with a human brain), but more than their intelligence and creativity, what sets these dogs apart from the rest of canine intelligentsia is purpose.

This is the joy and terror of this breed in a nutshell. When you look into a Standard’s eyes, the lights are on, someone is home, and there are plans for you. Standards are filled with purpose, and if you don’t assign them a job, they will find one of their own—and you may not like it.

Once given a job, the Standard’s pursuit of perfection is relentless. World War II POWs feared Standard Schnauzers because they could not be bribed. Standard Schnauzers are not the dog for everyone and are completely unsuitable for owners who are not willing to be leaders.

To truly be happy with Standard Schnauzers, you must not just live with them—you must work with them. To do otherwise is to risk working for them.

When Standard Schnauzer lovers gather at Schnauzapalooza, it won’t take long before the stories of the breed’s exploits fill the group with laughter and amazement. The pet sitter who left two Standards unattended in a yard for several hours and returned to find that mole excavation had turned a beautiful lawn into a Martian landscape (with moles neatly piled on the patio).

The breed’s second black AKC champion escaped from a show and was found 18 months later “joyously” leading a pack of feral dogs in the Chicago stockyards. Tales of homes and vehicles protected from thieves and children loyally escorted are too numerous to be surprising.

Standard Schnauzers have been trained to detect bombs, cadavers, cancer, and missing people. Standards have taught themselves to alert their humans to medical issues in dogs and people, remind them that faucets were left running outside, pick their own fruit, find dogs and children who are late for dinner, teach toddlers to stand, train cats, and gather field data for researchers.

If there is a job that is important and your Standard knows about it, then the odds are good they will try to find a way to help you with it. Particularly if you recognize that they are offering help and praise them for it. If you are alone and 8 months pregnant when fifty 200- to 300-pound sows break out of their barn and head for your garden, then there is no better dog to have on your side, even with no formal herding training.

These stories are true and illustrate the breed’s essential character. Standard Schnauzers are bold, intelligent, independent, and self-motivated. They are extremely trainable, but do not tolerate drilling and can be easily bored. Standards are fantastic with children, but without proper supervision, they could easily become partners in crime and create an unfathomable level of destruction.

They protect their family and property, but their good judgment means that they rarely misjudge new acquaintances. Their pursuit of vermin borders on holy war, and to own a Standard is to expect a few casualties brought to you for comment and approval.

Standard Schnauzers are incredibly healthy with very few inherited health problems. Farm dogs were not coddled, and only healthy dogs that could live on limited rations survived. Even pampered show dogs were, and are, tough and hardy. Many years ago, a pregnant bitch got loose at a dog show in Chicago, was lost, and feared dead. She was found weeks later after she’d dug her own den, delivered, and started raising six healthy puppies (one of which is behind many of the dogs showing today).

Standard Schnauzers are tough and self-sufficient. A sense of fair play is woven into their fiber, and once you set rules, you must be consistent. Under the skin of every Standard lurks a sheriff ready, willing, and able to enforce the rules and bring order. Don’t expect them to tolerate chaotic households, rude dogs, or sketchy visitors.

So how do you harness all this potential? There are many organized activities that today’s Standard Schnauzer fancier can do with their canine partner. Standards will be at work in the herding, obedience, rally, and agility rings at Schnauzapalooza this May.

The first challenge of herding with Standards is that they are not convinced you are needed and, in fact, sometimes you are not. Standard Schnauzers are capable of taking the flock out in the morning and collecting them at night with no human help. The other problem encountered training the breed is that they were developed to work geese, goats, pigs, and cattle. So without training, they use too much pressure for lighter sheep and ducks.

A large part of training a Schnauzer to herd is teaching them to reduce their presence and not panic the sheep. Because Standards start off with enough pressure to make even calm, heavy sheep flighty, they are convinced that all sheep are crazy and need more pressure to be brought under control. A trainer familiar with upright, intelligent herding dogs is a must.

The sports of obedience and rally appeal to a Standard’s desire for order, and the breed has many titlists at the highest levels of obedience competition. If you avoid drilling when training, your dog will happily rise to your level of expectation. Unless your timing is exquisite, physical correction can backfire by violating your Standard’s sense of fair play. Correction, whether verbal or physical, is best reserved for proofing when you know your dog knows his or her job.

Standards make dynamic and motivated agility partners. To maintain your Standard’s speed on course, you must remember that what is important to you is what will be important to your dog. If you insist on accuracy at the expense of speed, they will slow down. If you run pell-mell without being attentive to how you communicate what direction they should go, they are likely to go off course.

Your best chance at maintaining your dog’s natural speed and creating clear communication is a balanced approach to teaching these skills without excessive “fixing” of off courses in competition. Standard Schnauzers that take agility seriously are not afraid to provide feedback and criticism to sharpen their handler’s skills. With a Standard, agility is truly a team sport.

The Standards you see at Schnauzapalooza are less likely to kill vermin, drive livestock, or guard home, farm, and merchant’s carts than their predecessors, but they are still problem solvers with no equal. Those of us who own and love the breed are forever grateful to the German farmers who were faced with a problem and decided to let the dog solve it.