Sumo below at 2 years

Pictured at 13 months below, when he arrived here after being rescued from the breeder!

Pictured below at 10 months when owned by the breeder

Sumo is a loving boy.  He is fairly calm other than when he has on his "dancing shoes".  He is very into hugging and loves to stand on his hind legs to hug me for as long as I am willing to be hugged!  He gently rests both paws on my shoulder blades and tucks his ears back staring at me intently.  He hugs his dad by sitting at his feet as Charlie approaches.  The closer Charlie gets, the more Sumo wiggles and tries to inch closer and closer but he won't get up because if he gets hyper, Charlie won't hug him (never reward negative behavior).  Charlie bends down and hugs Sumo around the neck and Sumo curves his neck around Charlie's shoulders to hug back.

Sumo takes after his father, and is a "dancing bear" as he dances for you on his hind legs when he is excited and throws his arms around.  He looks kind of psychotic when caught doing it on film but it is adorable in person!  It is such a cute part of his personality that I tried to capture it for people to see that won't be able to meet Sumo!

As you see in his pictures as he gets older that he now has a broken left ear.  Not too long after her got here, he dug through a wall in our home while we were gone.  I couldn't leave him outside because he could easily sail over a 6 foot fence and if we found ways to block him in, he would dig under it.  He then would roam to seek me out and keep searching until I rappeared or he found me and it was obvious he was starved for affection and didn't want to lose it now that he was finally loved.  I started leaving him in my office when I had to leave for a little while and then he realized he could get out of that as well by digging through sheet rock.  Unfortunately, he was never crate trained so he would bust apart any type of crate if I put him in one.  The day he dug through the wall, Duke happened to be waiting on the other side of it.  Duke must have dominated him very quickly because when I got home, they were together and both appeared okay but the next day and from then on Sumo's ear has been down.  I later noticed a puncture that I had initially missed in the center of it, one single puncture, which must have been enough to do the trick and break the cartilage.  From then on, he has had one broken ear but I wouldn't change it for the world now as I think it gives him character!

Why that name? 

Sumo hails from Matheson, Colorado.  We rescued him and his two littermates, Geisha and Sumo from the "breeder".  The breeder had been shut down by the Colorado branch of the USDA for what we have been told was 37 counts of animal cruelty and neglect between 3 horses and many many Akitas.  We recognized these faces right away as being distantly related to our own dogs so we decided to schedule a transport for them for the 14 hour journey to us, with the help of one of our Colorado repeat puppy buyers, Monica Kieber and her daughter, Alix - A BIG THANK YOU TO THE KIEBER FAMILY who spent their weekend helping us save these poor dogs!  Also, thank you to Ann Simmons who put the entire transport together for us!

Sumo appeared to be the most physically unhealthy, as he was extremely thin for his age, and he also had issues due to emotional neglect and lack of human contact.  Due to his solitary confinement in a run by himself with wooden privacy walls on all sides, preventing him from seeing out, he would drop to the ground and was completely terrified of people or anything that moved other than his sister, Geisha.  We were told that the three of them got along fabulously; however, this was quickly proven not to be the case as the boys fought immediately and have remained happier separated ever since.  We did also find a rather large open wound in his neck the night he arrived which we treated and he quickly recovered from!

Breeding Info