A Perspective On Hokkaido Ken As A Breed
I (finally) picked up Genko two weeks ago, and we've been having a ton of fun together!
First off, thank you to @brada1878 for being willing to hang on to her for the 6 months necessary to finish school and to rebuild my financial foundation in order to make the move to Portland. Your patience has been a huge help with getting the Hokkaido program on track, and, of course, there is a puppy waiting for you whenever you ask
After having Genko for this time and also after meeting Katana... I have to 100% re-evaluate and come up with a new description for the breed for when I describe them to potential owners and interested people. Due to what my previous expectations for the breed was... they are NOTHING like what I expected. And that's a good thing.
I expected Hokkaido's negatives to be temperamental, reactive, have Shiba/Shikoku snarkiness to an extent, and to be the "problem child" of the relationship due to their strong personalities. For positives I expected good prey drive, energetic and athletic, problem solving/creative thinking, strong bonding with their owner, being very "in tune" with their owner, and moderate "stickiness".
Individuals
From my experiences, Hokkaido are hugely different from the "negatives" that I had expected, which, to be honest, mostly came from @Losech's experiences with Katana, both from early experiences + after having decided to give him up, and very early experiences with @thegela's Yezo, who didn't quite get along at Brad's and would "fun police" Hana the Kai.
However, since then Yezo has been worked with and has also begun reaching the tail end of his puppyhood, resulting in huge improvements with his comfort around excited, playful dogs.
I went and personally met Katana and he is the definition of a well adjusted, playful dog. He does apparently have a bit of defensiveness in the house, which my Kai, Ren, also has, but that really isn't a big deal as once both are outside of that situation they're almost as outgoing as it gets. That's a matter of changing their mindset over consistent, long term training. I'd have taken Katana with me in a heartbeat if I had the space available with my current housing situation. He's honestly an excellent dog, and it's my opinion that he just needed a more structured household, with an owner who was willing to put regular work & positive emotion into him in order to help him reach his potential. When I met Katana he playfully hopped right up and started checking me out, then rubbed himself all over me to get pets and scratches. Genko also did the same thing when I met her at Brad's just a few hours earlier.
@WhoBitMe's Meitou is another dog who started off with dog reactivity and has improved since beginning classes with him. It's not abnormal for dog reactivity in NK from the perspective of how common or uncommon it is. It's partly due to NK desiring "manners" from other dogs when it comes to greetings, and partly due to temperament. They tend to simply put up with less crap from other dogs before asserting themselves. Meitou has gone hiking with an unfamiliar Kishu girl recently and did great. He's also improved in his classes and come a long way. He's currently the one reactive Hokkaido that I'm familiar with, and it's not even a major case of reactivity where he can't be around other dogs.
In Comparison To NK In General
Most of us know that NK are highly malleable as young pups, where they go through fear and adjustment periods. To hear all of the negative things posted about Katana was pretty unfortunate, mainly because I feel that it was from a perspective of an owner who was expecting a finished product from puppyhood + taking on more at once than could be handled (5 dogs at once, 3 of which were puppies/adolescent) by one person. So I think that whole episode really tainted the image of Hokkaido Ken with a very biased and negative perspective where it was a "hands thrown up, don't care anymore" viewpoint.
Of all of the dogs that I've encountered, NK breeds draw the most "energy" (though I hate to use such an inaccurate word) from their owners. They get stressed if their owner is stressed, they draw comfort and stability from an owner who is comfortable and confident in a situation, and they also draw anxiety and fear from an owner who is inconsistent and uncomfortable. Without being in tune with that and using mostly positive techniques, then you're looking at a dog, or dogs, who are not going to be exhibiting desirable behavior as often as they otherwise would be. Dominance theory and abusive (striking, shaking, "alpha rolling", aggressive muzzle grabs, etc) methods are just going to increase fear and negative responses from these breeds, especially when they already trust you.
After being able to "watch" these other Hokkaido develop + my experiences road tripping across the country with Genko as a new dog to my pack, where she had never met Ren before this point... I have nothing but very positive things to say about this breed. Ren, my Kai, instigated more growling conflicts than Genko ever has, and it usually came down to Ren thinking Genko was too interested in her bully stick or Genko was doing her growly talking while Ren hadn't gotten used to it yet. Three days into adding Genko, Ren had come to understand Genko's talking and no longer got upset at her growls. Instead, Ren often initiated play when Genko would do her growly talk, which Genko happily went along with.
So to describe Genko:
-She's very into people and is interested in meeting absolutely anyone that offers attention and scratches
-She's very "loving" and wants to be with me all the time. When I scratch her cheek she'll often lean in and rest her head in my palm while I scratch, going so far as to get lost in the scratch and close her eyes with her head's weight fully rested in my hand
-Very interested in Ren, her "big sis" Kai who is 1.5 years older, and sticks together with her as a dynamic duo
-Very sticky, both in the sense that she wants to follow wherever I go and see what's up, and very much stays in contact when we're outside. A week after getting her, we went to a large beach and I decided to give her a try off leash with Ren, as Ren is already good off leash and generally a "dog friend" will want to be where the other dog and people are, so I figured that if Ren came running back with a recall then it's a good chance that Genko will follow. It turned out great and they had an absolute blast at the beach. They were both totally worn out for the rest of the day so it was an excellent experience. We also spent most of a day at a state park in California that had a nice wide, shallow river. We did offleash again, with no leash dragging from Genko's collar this time, and again it went great. Ren would roam up to 100 meters and would stay that far while she had interesting lizards to chase, Genko would run that far with her, but then after a few minutes she would come running back to me and roam out to about 50 meters with frequent "check ins"
-Not very interested in conflict. Genko will stand her own, as she did when @CrimsonO2's bossy (but awesome) Shikoku female instigated a stare down with her. Genko was interested, and then walked up to the challenge, where we pulled them apart at the first sign of heavy posturing and forward movement (in the moment we weren't sure if they were inspecting or posturing). Once apart, Genko turned away to engage in more positive interactions and activities. In altercations with a young Laika and with Ren, my Kai, it has been air snapping and yelling for a short period of time, followed by a slow reduction in volume and snapping, a quiet, tense freeze, and then Genko turning away first followed by shaking it off. She seems to usually be the first one to shake off during rough play and also exhibits a high frequency of "play snorts" to keep it known that what she's doing is nonaggressive play. Generally, if another dog is being rude, then she'll go find something more interesting to do vs a Shiba/Shikoku who would intentionally stay and instigate an escalation
-Highly, highly food driven and willing to work for it. We've started some basic training (house training and behavior training) and she's been a very quick learner. Granted, it's mainly recall (which she is already strong at due to "stickiness" and being in tune with me), "go to bed" for crating during meal time, and "up" to hop up on the couch or into the car. I have good expectations though for how training will continue.
-Persistent with "moving targets"! Genko will continually try to get who/what she's after, and will keep trying to figure out a way to get to it/them. We went to a meet up and Genko reeeally wanted to get to a kitty (I'm not 100% on whether it was to play or to chase, or both). She spent a total of about 15mins pawing at different parts of the glass door to try to get to it, and kept very focused on getting to it.
-She's a door dasher, but I think that's mainly from coming from a less "pet" structured household. I expect that to improve, and even if she does dash out the door, most of the time she'll come right back when called. If not, then it's soon after being called because she's decided to go pee first or smell a particular object before coming back.
-She's solid muscle and very, very energetic. She's almost two years old, but still has that puppy "go go go go go go sleep". When we were on the two week road trip (almost entirely sleeping in the car) she wasn't hyper, but instead alternated from front to back seat to stretch her legs between rests/destinations, followed by sleeping or relaxing. As soon as we got to a place to stretch our legs though, she was ready to go for as long as we were "going", then came right back to the car and was cool with resuming the trip.
-She has a very good prey drive, which is great for producing pups who can be used on hogs and other prey animals. This is also huge for working them in anything between flyball and lure coursing. The negative side to this is that I would not recommend homing them with cats if the Hokkaido is a rehome or older pup/adult.
Really, our only negative is that she likes to chug her water and is inconsistent with her bathroom needs (and signals). That'll be worked on with training and patience. It's not even a concern in my mind.
So, in summary, as I know for a fact that I'm not the only person who had heavy expectations for the breed being one that was going to require a lot of work compared to Kai... they seem a lot easier than Kai, and Kai are already easy dogs as long as the owner is willing to empathize with them and be patient during their puppy period. I thought it was going to take a lot of extra screening and discussion to figure out who would be a successful home for Hokkaido Ken, but it seems just the opposite. Instead of having most of my focus having to be on who will be a good match of their temperament, it seems that it'll mainly be the challenge of figuring out who will give them the exercise and activity that they deserve. If anyone had closed themselves off to this breed due to prior opinion, I suggest giving the breed another consideration. To describe them in one sentence, they're athletic Shiba/Kai hybrids without the "mischievousness" of Shibas haha. Genko is essentially my first Shiba, without his potential to get into *as much* trouble
Disclaimer: Anything in this that is related to other breeds is intended to give perspective, especially as how the majority of people are familiar with Shibas as their "gateway Nihon Ken". So when a behavior is compared to how a Shiba would take it, that's to relate it to a similar dog breed that almost everyone is familiar with, not to speak negatively about the breed. It wouldn't make sense to compare Hokkaido to JA, as most everyone here owns or has owned Shiba or Kai, with far fewer owning JA/Kishu/Shikoku. Plus, anyone coming over from the Shiba side will have a baseline to compare to.
First off, thank you to @brada1878 for being willing to hang on to her for the 6 months necessary to finish school and to rebuild my financial foundation in order to make the move to Portland. Your patience has been a huge help with getting the Hokkaido program on track, and, of course, there is a puppy waiting for you whenever you ask
After having Genko for this time and also after meeting Katana... I have to 100% re-evaluate and come up with a new description for the breed for when I describe them to potential owners and interested people. Due to what my previous expectations for the breed was... they are NOTHING like what I expected. And that's a good thing.
I expected Hokkaido's negatives to be temperamental, reactive, have Shiba/Shikoku snarkiness to an extent, and to be the "problem child" of the relationship due to their strong personalities. For positives I expected good prey drive, energetic and athletic, problem solving/creative thinking, strong bonding with their owner, being very "in tune" with their owner, and moderate "stickiness".
Individuals
From my experiences, Hokkaido are hugely different from the "negatives" that I had expected, which, to be honest, mostly came from @Losech's experiences with Katana, both from early experiences + after having decided to give him up, and very early experiences with @thegela's Yezo, who didn't quite get along at Brad's and would "fun police" Hana the Kai.
However, since then Yezo has been worked with and has also begun reaching the tail end of his puppyhood, resulting in huge improvements with his comfort around excited, playful dogs.
I went and personally met Katana and he is the definition of a well adjusted, playful dog. He does apparently have a bit of defensiveness in the house, which my Kai, Ren, also has, but that really isn't a big deal as once both are outside of that situation they're almost as outgoing as it gets. That's a matter of changing their mindset over consistent, long term training. I'd have taken Katana with me in a heartbeat if I had the space available with my current housing situation. He's honestly an excellent dog, and it's my opinion that he just needed a more structured household, with an owner who was willing to put regular work & positive emotion into him in order to help him reach his potential. When I met Katana he playfully hopped right up and started checking me out, then rubbed himself all over me to get pets and scratches. Genko also did the same thing when I met her at Brad's just a few hours earlier.
@WhoBitMe's Meitou is another dog who started off with dog reactivity and has improved since beginning classes with him. It's not abnormal for dog reactivity in NK from the perspective of how common or uncommon it is. It's partly due to NK desiring "manners" from other dogs when it comes to greetings, and partly due to temperament. They tend to simply put up with less crap from other dogs before asserting themselves. Meitou has gone hiking with an unfamiliar Kishu girl recently and did great. He's also improved in his classes and come a long way. He's currently the one reactive Hokkaido that I'm familiar with, and it's not even a major case of reactivity where he can't be around other dogs.
In Comparison To NK In General
Most of us know that NK are highly malleable as young pups, where they go through fear and adjustment periods. To hear all of the negative things posted about Katana was pretty unfortunate, mainly because I feel that it was from a perspective of an owner who was expecting a finished product from puppyhood + taking on more at once than could be handled (5 dogs at once, 3 of which were puppies/adolescent) by one person. So I think that whole episode really tainted the image of Hokkaido Ken with a very biased and negative perspective where it was a "hands thrown up, don't care anymore" viewpoint.
Of all of the dogs that I've encountered, NK breeds draw the most "energy" (though I hate to use such an inaccurate word) from their owners. They get stressed if their owner is stressed, they draw comfort and stability from an owner who is comfortable and confident in a situation, and they also draw anxiety and fear from an owner who is inconsistent and uncomfortable. Without being in tune with that and using mostly positive techniques, then you're looking at a dog, or dogs, who are not going to be exhibiting desirable behavior as often as they otherwise would be. Dominance theory and abusive (striking, shaking, "alpha rolling", aggressive muzzle grabs, etc) methods are just going to increase fear and negative responses from these breeds, especially when they already trust you.
After being able to "watch" these other Hokkaido develop + my experiences road tripping across the country with Genko as a new dog to my pack, where she had never met Ren before this point... I have nothing but very positive things to say about this breed. Ren, my Kai, instigated more growling conflicts than Genko ever has, and it usually came down to Ren thinking Genko was too interested in her bully stick or Genko was doing her growly talking while Ren hadn't gotten used to it yet. Three days into adding Genko, Ren had come to understand Genko's talking and no longer got upset at her growls. Instead, Ren often initiated play when Genko would do her growly talk, which Genko happily went along with.
So to describe Genko:
-She's very into people and is interested in meeting absolutely anyone that offers attention and scratches
-She's very "loving" and wants to be with me all the time. When I scratch her cheek she'll often lean in and rest her head in my palm while I scratch, going so far as to get lost in the scratch and close her eyes with her head's weight fully rested in my hand
-Very interested in Ren, her "big sis" Kai who is 1.5 years older, and sticks together with her as a dynamic duo
-Very sticky, both in the sense that she wants to follow wherever I go and see what's up, and very much stays in contact when we're outside. A week after getting her, we went to a large beach and I decided to give her a try off leash with Ren, as Ren is already good off leash and generally a "dog friend" will want to be where the other dog and people are, so I figured that if Ren came running back with a recall then it's a good chance that Genko will follow. It turned out great and they had an absolute blast at the beach. They were both totally worn out for the rest of the day so it was an excellent experience. We also spent most of a day at a state park in California that had a nice wide, shallow river. We did offleash again, with no leash dragging from Genko's collar this time, and again it went great. Ren would roam up to 100 meters and would stay that far while she had interesting lizards to chase, Genko would run that far with her, but then after a few minutes she would come running back to me and roam out to about 50 meters with frequent "check ins"
-Not very interested in conflict. Genko will stand her own, as she did when @CrimsonO2's bossy (but awesome) Shikoku female instigated a stare down with her. Genko was interested, and then walked up to the challenge, where we pulled them apart at the first sign of heavy posturing and forward movement (in the moment we weren't sure if they were inspecting or posturing). Once apart, Genko turned away to engage in more positive interactions and activities. In altercations with a young Laika and with Ren, my Kai, it has been air snapping and yelling for a short period of time, followed by a slow reduction in volume and snapping, a quiet, tense freeze, and then Genko turning away first followed by shaking it off. She seems to usually be the first one to shake off during rough play and also exhibits a high frequency of "play snorts" to keep it known that what she's doing is nonaggressive play. Generally, if another dog is being rude, then she'll go find something more interesting to do vs a Shiba/Shikoku who would intentionally stay and instigate an escalation
-Highly, highly food driven and willing to work for it. We've started some basic training (house training and behavior training) and she's been a very quick learner. Granted, it's mainly recall (which she is already strong at due to "stickiness" and being in tune with me), "go to bed" for crating during meal time, and "up" to hop up on the couch or into the car. I have good expectations though for how training will continue.
-Persistent with "moving targets"! Genko will continually try to get who/what she's after, and will keep trying to figure out a way to get to it/them. We went to a meet up and Genko reeeally wanted to get to a kitty (I'm not 100% on whether it was to play or to chase, or both). She spent a total of about 15mins pawing at different parts of the glass door to try to get to it, and kept very focused on getting to it.
-She's a door dasher, but I think that's mainly from coming from a less "pet" structured household. I expect that to improve, and even if she does dash out the door, most of the time she'll come right back when called. If not, then it's soon after being called because she's decided to go pee first or smell a particular object before coming back.
-She's solid muscle and very, very energetic. She's almost two years old, but still has that puppy "go go go go go go sleep". When we were on the two week road trip (almost entirely sleeping in the car) she wasn't hyper, but instead alternated from front to back seat to stretch her legs between rests/destinations, followed by sleeping or relaxing. As soon as we got to a place to stretch our legs though, she was ready to go for as long as we were "going", then came right back to the car and was cool with resuming the trip.
-She has a very good prey drive, which is great for producing pups who can be used on hogs and other prey animals. This is also huge for working them in anything between flyball and lure coursing. The negative side to this is that I would not recommend homing them with cats if the Hokkaido is a rehome or older pup/adult.
Really, our only negative is that she likes to chug her water and is inconsistent with her bathroom needs (and signals). That'll be worked on with training and patience. It's not even a concern in my mind.
So, in summary, as I know for a fact that I'm not the only person who had heavy expectations for the breed being one that was going to require a lot of work compared to Kai... they seem a lot easier than Kai, and Kai are already easy dogs as long as the owner is willing to empathize with them and be patient during their puppy period. I thought it was going to take a lot of extra screening and discussion to figure out who would be a successful home for Hokkaido Ken, but it seems just the opposite. Instead of having most of my focus having to be on who will be a good match of their temperament, it seems that it'll mainly be the challenge of figuring out who will give them the exercise and activity that they deserve. If anyone had closed themselves off to this breed due to prior opinion, I suggest giving the breed another consideration. To describe them in one sentence, they're athletic Shiba/Kai hybrids without the "mischievousness" of Shibas haha. Genko is essentially my first Shiba, without his potential to get into *as much* trouble
Disclaimer: Anything in this that is related to other breeds is intended to give perspective, especially as how the majority of people are familiar with Shibas as their "gateway Nihon Ken". So when a behavior is compared to how a Shiba would take it, that's to relate it to a similar dog breed that almost everyone is familiar with, not to speak negatively about the breed. It wouldn't make sense to compare Hokkaido to JA, as most everyone here owns or has owned Shiba or Kai, with far fewer owning JA/Kishu/Shikoku. Plus, anyone coming over from the Shiba side will have a baseline to compare to.
Comments
That's a very good writeup. I have been very impressed with Genko's off leash adventure on the road trip and eating her bully sticks so close with Ren, and how happy she seems. She doesn't seem to have that rebonding challenge that is typical of Kai- like she seems like your dog already, only 2 weeks in.
I am also super proud of Yezo, the only Hokkaido I have met IRL. He was sweet to meet, and is very funny. He has shown a great capacity to observe and learn and adjust. Angela has done great with him. I think though, that potential owners would do well to have some experience with reactivity and relationship-based training. Meitou and Yezo (and owners) have been helped to be the best they can be with reactive dog classes. Katana appears to have improved a great deal from living at Brad and Jen's, and obviously they are experienced with all kinds of dogs and train with kindness and understanding. Krisz really enjoys all of her hokkas and reports no behavior issues.
Keep learning and writing about Genko!
I have to say, meeting Meitou, Genko, and Katana was a very pleasant experience for me. I can see how breeds or individuals in breeds like Shikoku or Shiba might not like their exhuberance, but Fionna (Kishu) just wanted to play-play-play with Meitou SO BADLY. I think she also got to meet Genko in passing. I don't remember well. Brad and Jen's house is kind of a blur of action.
As far as @ayk 's question about children....I personally don't trust Meitou with children just for my peace of mind, but that is because of his individual personality and I cannot say that other Hokkaido are the same way because I have not met any others.
@WrylyBrindle I'm pretty sure you're just restricted by quantity, not so much closing yourself off to breed
You're right about the re-bonding time. However, I'm not sure whether it's due to going from "kennel" environment to pet environment, or whether it's a breed trait. Katana also seems really well adjusted to his new environment after a pretty short adjustment period, which truly started when Brad and I discussed that I wasn't going to able to take him.
Ren & Genko actually just ran into Ren's roomy crate and sat patiently inside while I prepared their food bowls on top of the crate lol. They're making a habit of surprising me with how they're getting along :P
I think they don't keep judgements as close to the chest in comparison to Kai. As in, a Kai is going to remember very well when their quick was cut, or some other slight occurred. Hokka *may* be more hardy and not put so much emphasis on those things. I think @WhoBitMe and @thegela could give more insight on that point
@lindsayt Ike really is a great Shiba guy to be ok with that sort of directness, and Farrah sounds like tons of fun. I wonder how Farrah would get along with Genko. So far my roommates Keiko, female Shiba, seems to be doing ok with her as long as Genko doesn't get too direct with her. Male/Female and Female/Female pairing does sound like a solid idea.
@WhoBitMe I definitely think we'll have a lot more to talk about as time goes on! I feel you on the food drive too, by the way. Ren isn't nearly as food driven as Genko, especially when Ren feels pressured or stressed. Obedience classes had been a challenge due to that, so I cancelled them and self-taught. She may be ready to give them another go though. As for Genko, if she can tone it down a notch, she'll do great in obedience LOL. Maybe we can do classes and his reward will be to walk Genko around the corner when he does the right thing :P
For the children subject, what exactly is it that has you not trusting him around children? He's too nippy, too impulsive, doesn't know his strength, is mouthy...?
Regarding children. Yes, Meitou is very mouthy. He plays mouthy and within reason I let him play that way with me (and others who are willing to wrestle with him are aware he will be putting his mouth all over their arms). As I imagine this would not go well children, or parents of said children, Meitou does not get to play with children. Meitou has done well with children in the past, but has not had any recent exposure to children even though the family members that watch him during the day often babysit a neighbor's 4 year old. Meitou does have some resource guarding tendencies and is not afraid to bark ("yell") and honestly would probably nip at clothes.This is not something I want to put a children through. While Meitou has gotten better with fewer resource guarding occurrences they still crop up often enough that I feel better not having him around kids. Kids are just kind of unpredictable. Plus Meitou is not immediately friendly with strangers. He takes a long time to accept new people as far as petting goes and strangers trying to pet him makes him nervous. He does like to go up to people and lick their hands, though...
But I will reiterate that he has done well with kids in the past and can be "near" kids like when we are on walks in busy places, etc. and he seems to be interested in children. It may be a situational thing.
I'll have to meet one someday... too bad they're aren't more NK in general in this area. (Maybe wherever I end up after grad school will have more opportunities for that!)
Ren on the other hand, I generally don't let kids pet her unless they seem well behaved, then I'll pick her up and let them stroke her neck. We're not around kids much in the first place though :P
@Trzcina I was under that impression too for pretty much the same reasons. So it's definitely a welcome change in impression! Whereabouts are you located?