Old school German Shepherds - Page 7

Sunny, pretty sure the American showdog to which you refer did not have the same issues as the female pup I described...she came from a long line of KNPV dogs top and bottom of her pedigree.

As for destroying water buckets...that is usually a symptom of boredom. I have seen dogs with zero drive, from different breeds that don't require any prey drive, destroy water buckets just because it's entertaining.

The pup I'm talking about was out loose with me, but would get into a frenzy where she would grab me when I picked up the horse feed bucket, was just much misplace rage at the bucket.

Matter of fact, when I had her in the kennel run, she never touched her water bucket...it was stationary, after all.

Jo Interesting coincidence .. I picked several of the same names for my GSs that you have for your GSs . I am glad you brought up new blood , outside blood . I remember having conversations years ago where many breeders harshly disagreed with me about line breeding . They didn't know me personally and I tried to tell them if anyone had a handle on genetics , then I did , without any further explanation . I kept the conversation quite short with two points and they pertain to selective breeding .

First point : I understand the line breeding of traits to enhance and intensify traits in the progeny generation from the parent generation .

Second point : I went on to say, 'ok , I know this selection you a have a goal to pass on the beneficial traits you see that bring you to your breeding goal . BUT*** .. the price you pay for achieving that goal , will be your downfall . Because with those beneficial genes you also bring with them the very bad genes , the detrimental genes in the breed. Or you keep , enhance those traits that you want but in doing that forfeit other important beneficial genes..Those genes I refer to are ones that cannot be ' bred back in ' and they are lost permanently in the breed. '

Now because what I se that has been done .. I would encourage any good breeder if they have good stock , to take a sample from their male and bank it for future use with another outcrossing from a appropriate female. I think the intensive line breeding has literally destroyed the GS . If that was not the case we would not be talking about ' old school GS '. How I wished we could have had some of the genetics of GS from years ago because somewhere along the line [ no pun intended] good breeding should always brings in fresh , outcross, blood into the breeding program . And the failure to have done that is where we are today .. now ? is it to late ??

' Selective breeding ' .. the previous posters are more spot on than most people realize !!

Centurian, I agree, of course.

One thing I would say as to selection and line breeding: the desired traits for which the line breeding is done, will likely not show up in all members of the litter. And in fact, may not be expressed until the dogs are closer to maturity.
For that reason, I have kept and raised to maturity all six pups from the first line breeding I made. I kept three of the dogs for myself....one dog because of his tendency for aggression even tho he was very obedient to me and overall a good dog---for me. I would not place him with any one in the public for his safety. I never have bred him.
Another male and one female I kept and made one breeding each from them. The female is Wallace's dam.

The other three dogs in the litter went to family situations after ofa preliminary h/e and temperament assessment. These dogs will be 8 yrs old this year.

So, keeping the whole litter, from my line breeding, till adulthood to be able to make an accurate assessment of 'mentality' and health and structure, is to make the best selection possible.

Centurian, as someone who studied genetics in university, that's been a hobby horse of mine for YEARS!! I think both the German show lines and the American show lines have passed the point where the breed can be 'fixed' without bringing in numerous outcrosses to other lines. And of course, people are going to splutter and complain: 'but-but- we'll lose TYPE!!'

Yeah, your dogs won't look like cookie cutter versions of each others anymore, and IMHO, that ain't such a bad thing! Maybe their life spans will go a bit beyond 10 years now, and you won't have so many dogs dropping dead from mysterious causes at a young age!

The guy I board my dogs with when I go away breeds ASL dogs with extreme angulation. He says he's seen chihuahuas with bigger strides than my working line female has. I frankly don't care: I didn't buy her to be a show dog, her leg muscles feel like Arnie Schwarzenegger's and she can jump two feet straight up in the air from a sit! His overangulated dogs wouldn't last an hour if they had to herd sheep all day.

He has introduced some German blood into his lines, so I respect him for that, and I avoid talking about conformation when I bring my dogs in to board. We are looking for totally different things in a dog.

 I think both the German show lines and the American show lines have passed the point where the breed can be 'fixed' without bringing in numerous outcrosses to other lines. 

 my apology if i see something not from breeder's perspective but i'm not really sure 
what a point in "correction" screwed-up lines by crossbreeding them to those, not yet screwed. 
wouldn't be better just to leave them quietly die out?

Valk, I don't know in what world that might actually happen. I supposed it could, but not in my lifetime or yours. The SV especially is still very much in control of the breed. But...well, the dogs dying out... I have a link to a book published around the turn of the 20th century, called "Dogs of All Nations" and it's sobering to see how many of the breeds in that book now no longer exist. Reminds me of the fable of "Old Blue" which is a wonderful explanation of the pitfalls of breeding to popular sires and letting the gene pool become too narrow.

I also would like to point out that the working line breeders need to be careful about how many of their dogs are being backmassed on Fero and his descendants. It is getting very, very hard to find a working line dog without these dogs in the pedigree multiple times.

 

The Fable of Old Blue

by C.A. Sharp editor of the "Double Helix Network News"

 

THE FABLE OF OLD BLUE Consider the hypothetical case of Old Blue, Malthound extraordinaire. Blue was perfect; sound, healthy and smart. On week days he retrieved malt balls from dawn to dusk. On weekends he sparkled in malt field and obedience trials as well as conformation shows, where he baited to - you guessed it- malt balls.

Everybody had a good reason to breed to Blue, so everybody did. His descendants trotted in his paw-prints on down through their generations. Blue died full of years and full of honor. But what people didn't know was that Old Blue, good as he was, carried a few bad genes. They didn't affect him, nor the vast majority of his immediate descendants. To complicate the matter further, some of those bad genes were linked to genes for important Malthound traits.

A few Malthounds with problems started showing up. They seemed isolated, so everyone assumed it was "just one of those things". A few declared them "no big deal". Those individuals usually had affected dogs. All in all, folks carried on as usual.

Time passed. Old Blue had long since moldered in his grave. By now, everyone was having problems, from big ones like cataracts, epilepsy or thyroid disease to less specific things like poor-keepers, lack of mothering ability and short life-span. "Where can I go to get away from this?" breeders wondered. The answer was nowhere.

People became angry. "The responsible parties should be punished!" Breeders who felt their programs might be implicated stonewalled. Some quietly decided to shoot, shovel and shut-up. A few brave souls stood up and admitted their dogs had a problem and were hounded out of the breed.

The war waged on, with owners, breeders and rescue workers flinging accusations at each other. Meanwhile everybody carried on as always. After another decade or two the entire Malthound breed collapsed under the weight of its accumulated genetic debris and went extinct.

Old School German Shepherds .... Joan you make me think of my first German Shepherd in 1964 . A beautiful black /tan puppy who died 14 years later. Rin Tin Tin ... that he was and more ! This dog had , as other posters on many threads describe: ' had it all ' . From Germany's and it's best stock , my father paid $1000. dollars back then , equivalent to $10,000. today . I have had 30 GS from puppy to adult. In my years I have had Belgium Malinois and 30 GS .. I have had SL - some of the best SL in North America !! I have had working line , some of the best WL in North America . But , only 1 dog came to par with my 1st GS. He went every where. Would wait by himself in the city outside the supermarket , tolerated other dogs , was reliable with all people and children . Would and could unequivocally protect and he proved that, one day . He was never trained formally. Everything was inherently natural in his behavior . Even the OB - he listened quite well. He was strong mentally and physically , he was fearless . .
I have seen many GS and by today's standards , I hardly*** ever see a GS that has his ability and mentality or the ' GOT IT ALL GS ' from long ago . Not saying there are none of them in existence .. For me , just has been hard to see them often , among the many thousands of GS I have seen , as they are rare . I truly miss the Ol' School GS ...... If you [ or anyone else ] have this Jo , I am very envious of you , but happy for you :-} .....

The world is changing in front of our eyes. And, not to the better in most things including the state of the gs.

We all know the reasons why, it is discussed here on PDB on so very many threads. Breeding for extreme traits, breeding for money only, breeding too often with the same males -titled winners, lowering of test standards (if tested at all) and lastly but perhaps most importantly....buyers that don’t know what they are buying and buy for wrong reasons. Simply because they drive the market.

There is so much to say on this topic, but let me start with my first long relationship with a gsd, which started when I was a teenager in 1970, and why i fell for this breed.

My best friend’s family at the time had a gs female, Athena.

Athena was, back then, a run of the mill German bred GS, and was silver and black.
She had steady eyes and steady nerves.

I spent most all of my free time with my friend, her siblings and her whole extended family, spending nights...for days or weeks at a time and was treated like member of the family. And fell in love with this dog.

Athena was not officially trained in any way, but she was treated just like one of us kids. I see now in hindsight, 2018, that she had the freedom, as many dogs had back then, to develop a personality.
This type of freedom that dogs had back then, is pretty much nonexistent now a days in most first world countries.

An example:
Every morning, before going to school, we would walk to the town bakery and get fresh bread and rolls for my friend’s grandmother’s breakfast..she was in a wheelchair and loved a fresh roll with jam to go with her morning coffee.
My friend and I, and Athena, would walk to town, no leash, and Athena would sit in front of the bakery waiting for us, watching us through the store window. The bakers wife always gave us an old piece of black bread to take to Athena. When we had our bread, we put the fresh rolls into a jute bag with loop handles, left the store and gave Athena her piece of bread. After she finished it, she would take the bag in her teeth and walk home again to give the bag to my friends mom, who would then make grannies jam rolls. And we continued on to go to school in the opposite direction. Athena, never once ate the bread in the bag and never once delayed her mission to get back home.

She was our buddy. She would do everything with us from going into the woods looking for mushrooms where she was our protecter, to sitting with us under the cramped crawl space under the house, when we lit up our our first stolen cigarettes and coughed up a storm.

All of the freedoms are gone. Dogs are often taught things that have no real use in the real world. Going without a leash, impossible in a lot of places. A dog going someplace on a mission, not done anymore.....police are called. Training is often nothing short of rote training while not really looking at what the dog is doing. Driving dogs crazy with incessant repeating of commands.

Any way, I want to stress to anyone buying a puppy the number one cardinal rule in my book...go see the kennel, meet the family and look at living conditions and above all meet the parent dogs!
If you cant meet the male in person, as that is not always possible, find out as much as you can. Not only pictures, but in longer videos of daily life activities ideally.
But you MUST meet the female and her home environment. She will pass on a lot to the pups.
Take the time to do this, swallow the expense...you will (hopefully) have this pup for the next 12 years.

 

Centurian -
I just read your post after I wrote my post above. We posted pretty similarly/simultaneously.
It seems we had the same experience.
Just amazing we used almost the same words describing our first gs experiences. 

Jesse .. nice post and story line

Ol' time GS ... well ... Ol' time people too . A little off topic , but not entirely off topic , as we do train our GS and are involved with them - but not so much the youth as before ! , .. that makes us an integral part so maybe the mods cut me a little room here off topic.

I think many agree the GS mentality has been affected , at least to some degree over the years .. What is even more important is that that our children's mentality and literally their minds , their brain structure itself , in today's world is equally becoming effected and affected ! Technology is a major cause of this . I'll skip the scientific studies . No wonder the youth don't take interest in the GS as once was.. Dogs and animals have lost a great part of significance in society as it once was. The GS has changed from years ago .. and so have children .... just saying ....