Life · To my father
Brick died the year I was born. Lee came later.
By the time I was born the Ring was already history. So was the dog that had searched under rubble.
Laid in the cradle
I was born in 1991 and grew up in western Styria. The dog school and the handling lay in the cradle — not as a course, but as the ordinary day of my father Wolfgang.
Wolfgang was a doer. A teacher. A strict father with a lot of understanding for individual development — provided every duty in the family house was met. Leading, teaching, the self-taught way: he laid that in the cradle. Practically every driving licence there is. With cars and with dogs, an exceptional talent. He could do anything if you showed him once.
A fact that belongs here because it is true: Wolfgang never once touched a computer.
This page honours him. It does not invent him. There is no anecdote here that cannot be pinned to a year, a dog, a racing circuit or a photograph. Anyone who grew up in a family where stories grow knows the difference — and knows why it matters.
Ask me about Brick. Ask me about Armenia. Ask me about the father who drove machines and handled dogs — and left the computer alone.
Österreichring, 1984
Seven years before I was born: Wolfgang at the Österreichring. Guarding, demonstrations, service-dog work. The photographs come from the family archive.
The circuit was only taken over by Red Bull in 2004. This history belongs to the family, not to a sponsor — and that is not a quibble, it is the reason the story is told here at all.
I was not there in 1984. I had not been born. Wolfgang already knew how serious it was before the son existed. Lunar Lupus comes out of that order. Not the other way round.
Brick
Before Lee came, a shepherd dog stood under rubble. Brick. German Shepherd. Countless trainings, SchH3. Avalanche dog. Rubble search dog. Tireless in the search-and-rescue brigade. Honours followed — not as decoration, but as a consequence of the work.
In 1988 the great earthquake in Armenia. Brick on duty. A country where houses had collapsed. A dog that searched.
That is not a motif for a campaign. That is the seriousness you do not afterwards ask an animal to perform as a gag. Anyone who has once searched for people with a dog does not then put it on a stage as a prop — and that exact distinction carries every decision on set today.
Brick lived until the middle or end of 1991. That is the year I was born. Two years of gap. In 1993 Lee moved in.
What does a dog search for under the rubble of Armenia?
Brigade
Public demonstrations, among them 1986, with the handlers’ brigade. Not a theatre dog — a service dog that works in front of people because it worked without people first.
Demonstrating means: the dog carries it. And it carries it because it carried it without an audience first. The same distinction holds on set today: an animal that is handled, not posed.
This stance does not come from a manual. It comes from this line — and it is the reason we cancel a scene before the camera rolls instead of explaining afterwards why it did not work.
Lee vom Altsteirerhof, 1993 to 2002
German Shepherd. Trained by Wolfgang to SchH3 — protection dog, today IGP. I was two when Lee moved in and eleven when those years ended.
Anyone who takes a dog to SchH3 is not doing it for fun. They stand on the training ground every week, in every weather, for years. A child growing up beside that does not learn dog handling. It learns that a thing is only finished when it is finished.
Between Brick and Lee lay two years of gap. I never knew Brick. I got him through Wolfgang, second hand, with everything that entails — and that is one of the reasons I wrote this page at all.
My father left the computer alone. Everything else he took in hand.
What is left of it
Out of the service-dog work came the kennel, out of the demonstration came the film work, out of the teaching came the training and the coaching. The tools have changed, the order has not: first work without an audience, then appear in front of one.
How it went on from there is in the Story. What is usable from it for other people is under Coaching.
The photographs are from the family archive.
If you want to know more about Wolfgang, Brick or the Ring: ask. Not all the answers are on this page, and that is deliberate.