The Paw Behind the Logo

The paw behind our logo is from our Dutch Shepherd Casino. Casino was the first Dutch Shepherd I trained. He became a full service police dog and was trained in narcotics, article search, tracking, cadaver search, obedience, agility, building search, and apprehension. Casino and I assisted in training new handlers and dogs. Later we went through other specialized training like crowd control and building searches with a team. We went through recertification every 6 months. Casino and I  worked together for approximately 5 years. Casino was then signed over for me to keep. Casino adapted extremely well to not being a working dog. At first I thought he needed to be in a crate while we were not home but the wire indoor kennels were no match for him. So he was then left out while we were gone and never destroyed anything. Casino was great in the family setting and enjoyed playing with my kids or cuddling with anyone he could as long as he knew you. In March of this year we noticed his abdomen was swollen. Casinos behavior or eating had not changed. I took him to our vet and had an x-ray done. Unfortunately Casino had a large mass. The vet said they could remove it but it might be really hard on him since he was almost 11 years old. We opted to have it removed to hopefully have him with us for several more years. The surgery went very good and removed an almost 10 lb mass from him. The vet and I were shocked. The vet said the masses get quite large in the abdomen because they are not noticed until they get large. Casino lost a lot of blood during surgery and needed time to recover. He was recovering well at home but later his breathing became labored. The vet determined he had fluid in his lungs and was afraid he might develop more masses after the one was removed. With no improvement and very heavy hearts we knew it was time so he did not suffer. I made arrangements for our vet to come to our house so Casino would be at home and with us when we said our final good bye. Colette got home from work and we brought his bed done from our room. Casino laid on it and we laid with him comforting him. While we both petted him we told him it was okay. Before the vet got to the house Casino took his last breath and passed at the end of April. We knew Casino was waiting for us to be with him and to know it was okay before he passed. Casino will never be forgotten. We got his paw print molded in clay and then later I made a stamp with it. We wanted to use Casinos paw print in our business logo cause he is the reason we fell so much in love with the Dutch Shepherd breed. He will forever be apart of us and our business.