Ak­ile Si­mon

The Ger­man Shep­herd Breed Club of T&T (TGS­BCTT) is hop­ing to cre­ate his­to­ry at the up­com­ing 22nd WUSV World Schutzhund Cham­pi­onships 2009, at Krefeld, Ger­many. The event kicks off on Thurs­day and ends on Sun­day, and, for the first time, this coun­try has sent a del­e­gate to par­tic­i­pate in the K-9 com­pe­ti­tion. Twen­ty-nine year-old Vitha­la Singh of El Do­ra­do with his K9 part­ner, Xi­to Vom Con­neforde, will rep­re­sent this coun­try for a chance to be the num­ber one K9 ath­lete team in the world. They will com­pete in three phas­es of Schutzhund, which are, track­ing, obe­di­ence and pro­tec­tion. They will come up against some of the best dogs and train­ers in the world, from 41 oth­er coun­tries card­ed to be part of the pres­ti­gious dog event.

Singh, an avid dog en­thu­si­ast is al­so a mar­tial arts teacher. In 2003 he was a found­ing mem­ber of The Ger­man Shep­herd Breed Club of T&T. The Ger­man Shep­herd Breed Club of T&T is a mem­ber club of the World Union of Ger­man Shep­herd Clubs (WUSV) with head­quar­ters in Ger­many. In giv­ing some his­to­ry about the sport, Singh said the dog world in this coun­try for decades, was dom­i­nat­ed with Eng­lish im­ports, due to quar­an­tine re­stric­tions, pri­mar­i­ly from show blood­lines. These blood­lines make up the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the Ger­man Shep­herd breed which is over­seen by the lo­cal T&T Ken­nel Club.

Singh and his as­so­ciates have im­port­ed West Ger­man, East Ger­man and Czech and Slo­vak Blood­line dogs, and cre­at­ed their own trend of dog on the is­land.

"We were get­ting dogs from an en­tire­ly new gene pool and al­though we had to en­dure the wait for our dogs in quar­an­tine both lo­cal­ly and in the UK. In the end, it was worth it," he said. At the com­pe­ti­tion, Singh is re­ly­ing on his long time friend and coach, Ivan Bal­a­banov, to put the fin­ish­ing touch­es on his rou­tine. Al­so in Ger­many to lend sup­port is his ad­vi­sor and men­tor Ajay Singh of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and Christo­pher Seeyave, In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer of T&T Roy­al Canin dis­trib­u­tor.