Thoughts on cofirmation and working line studs - Page 6

JDH...Please read this from 4pack on another post! This is suppossed to be right but our dogs don't field test all day long, so how do we know the guy who made up the "correct" angles knows what the hell he was talking about? I believe angulation is all about looks. I have a very well angulated showline who can't work for more than 30 minutes without dropping. I have hidiously ugly "to showline people anyway" dogs that can go all day. These dogs have flat backs, less bone, one is oversized at the shoulder. Both have had broken legs so some arthritic issues and they still don't use it as an excuse. I can't say that drive is what pulls them through to keep going because my big male doesn't have food or ball drive at all. My dogs regularly run at least 5 miles a day at a good 20 miles per hour. My showline can't go faster than 10 mph and after a 1/2-1 mile she is done. I have been doing this at least twice a day for the last month. Yesterday I opted to leave my showline home because she is dragging farther and farther behind. She is 7, my oversized male is also 7 and my female WL is 6. My showline is from a kennel that has produced 100's of dogs in Germany for show. My other dogs are badly bred who knows what? I have no papers on them, they are rescues. I am sickened and disgusted everytime I compair my 7 year olds. My show girl has a very dry firm gate at a trot. Great for the ring. However getting her to move faster than that, is something to see. I can plainly see she was not built for working all day. My other dogs I am sure are from BYB and bred to make pups and profit not improvements, yet they still are 10 x's more physicaly firm than the well bred showline gal. 2 junk bred dogs both with previously broken rear legs, one just recently, still out jumping, running and all over performing better than my showline SCH 3. Interesting to say the least??? Is this right, or is it just babble? Either way it sertainly changed my view on lines. I used to think a V rated SCH 3 really must be something special. She is something special allright. Never in my life have a seen a more bi polar paperweight of a dog. She just lays there 95% of the time. If I wante that I would have got a lap dog! Much cheaper to feed and easier to scoop poop.

Aron is pretty ugly, Kyle. With his bloodlines he ought to be prettier. He has Uwe Kirschental (via Andy Bildsdaule, one of my all-time favorite dogs) behind him, and Uwe typically improved conformation even 2-3 generations on down the line. Lasco is better looking, but he goes to Illya Schwartaenzwinger, a dog I knew and didn't like, and I didn't like the inconsistency of his progeny and his progeny's progeny, particularly that of USA National Ch. winner Buck von der Pfalz. Not to take away from Chicco, who produced darned well, especially when crossed on Uwe, Wanko Maaruae, or Wicko Meran. But you know my opinions on E. German dogs... Shelley No time to go on further right now. Maybe later.

I like your two sable pups. Nice in fact great!

I think Aron v Bracheler See is a nice looking dog. Above all, seeing him work is an awesome sight. I wouldn't rely too much on photos to judge a dog. I mean these days they are photoshoping the dogs on web pages and even here on the DB. Dying coats, taking pics from different angles, so many ways you can mak any dog look better and they do.

did u get my sable pup pic 4pack?

Yes she is a cute little thing.

Sorry 4pack...We have a bonified picture expert on this board!

Another thought: Conformation is correctly spelled with 3 o's and only one i. Might as well try to look like we know what we're discussing here. LOL

Sorry for not hitting spell check. I have another dog to add. Aly vom Vordersteinwald This stud has several progeny that have competed in the BSP. Thanks for all of the interesting responces. I think it is rather interesting that the show dogs have a beautiful gate but no stamina. I have all working dogs and the best confirmation any would get is probably an SG. But my dogs can run all day long. The last AD I put on a dog was done without formal conditioning. We just had to acclimate the dog to the bike. I also mentioned size because we all know that a large dog is not as agile as a smaller dog. I'll take working ability over conformation any day. I think Aron is a handsome dog. Kyle

"I think it is rather interesting that the show dogs have a beautiful gate but no stamina." I don't know that you can generalize that much from the limited sampling in this thread. I have an American-lines male who will be 12 on St. Patrick's Day. He is a weak-pasterned, rabbit-footed, east-west long-hocked overangulated bag of bones who makes even the most roach-backed German show-lines dog dragging its butt while gaiting look like the best GSD you've ever seen. When he runs, he kicks up in front and basically bounces along. The kicker is that when he was x-rayed at 1 year following some sort of injury, I was told he was mildly dysplastic in one hip. Yet this dog is still fully capable of trotting 15 miles on our Saturday walks in the local forests and cranberry bogs. What he does is trot out 100-200 yards to check out the deer scat and coyote markings and whatnot, then trot back to me, then trot out again, then back, etc. etc. etc. He does triple the distance I do. This past spring I went on a 10-mile hike and he had to have done between 25-30 miles - and I was a helluva lot more tired than he was that night, believe you me! He still chases a ball until my arm gets tired after a half-hour or so. My point? Despite his Grade F appearance, there's something inside the dog that allows him to overcome his poor breeding. Call it desire, or heart, or drive or whatever you'd like - I'm not sure what it is, but I'd suggest that it must be lacking in the couch potatoes described by others, because I can guarantee that their dogs have better conformation than my guy without even seeing them.