Top Showlines with good protection phase - Page 26

It is strange how fate moves Randy..... you handled Ikon for his breed survey when he was only a SchH1 and you handled my dog Juneau for his first conformation V rating when he was a SchH1 too.... and got him a V3 placing to boot.....

2 showdogs with working ability and both started their careers after being handled by you...... may be you need to come over to the dark side after all....!

The question came up whether a breeder actually had the foresight to produce a dog or were they just lucky?

Each breeder has a vision of what the German Shepherd should be. They strive from generation to generation to produce this type of dog and improve upon their last. There are showline breeders that breed strictly for conformation and hope by the grace of God somebody can put a title on one of their dogs. There are showline breeders that breed numbers, highest placing dogs get their female regardless. There are breeders that truly have a feel for animals, genetics and can predict what they will produce by knowing their females and the males that will combine to produce the desired traits.

It doesn't take long to look at a program and decide the breeders objections. If their website says; Super Supreme Ultimate Extra VA1!, TOP, TOP, TOP! Best in the WORLD!!!! and there are no results anywhere to be found from these breeders, there's a pretty good chance they fall into the first two catagories.

If the website quietly displays the accomplishments and proudly posts the pedigrees of their dogs with many of their dogs in the motherline and there are results available for everyone to see generation after generation. You have a breeder.

Let's start with Amigo and look at what happened with him. I'll share what I know which is limited since I never met him. I only know him through what he produced. From Amigo there were three sons in a position to carry on the family tradition. Cento Monopteros, Pitt Tronje, Quartz Templari.

Cento produced one or two. Kerry Torberg (who was VA in the US) was probably his best. There was just not enough from Cento to impact the breed.

Pitt Tronje went VA in Germany and had his chance. He was a dominant producer of work, but he was also a dominant producer of physical characteristics that didn't work well with many females let's say.... I had one of his best, so I can say that.

Quartz went VA in Germany too. Not a high VA, but high enough to put him on the list. He got a few good females. There were some good offspring in both females and males that could produce. He was able to pass on some decent physical traits and most important his mind and heart. That's what I like about what I've seen from him. The dogs have heart. You can put them in many situations they are not comfortable with and they just stay there and face it until they're done. They don't know why they don't stop, they just don't. They show some pressure now and then, but they stay there and work through it.

Quartz was owned by Karl-Heinz Fuller of the 'vom Zellergrund' kennel. I've been to Schweinfurt, seen some of the Quartz offspring, and there are many good dogs in the area with Quartz in the pedigree. There were two males from Quartz, Triumph's Gucci and Romeo Pallas Athena left to carry on. Both of these breeder's were very concerned about working ability in their breeding program. Lyda who purchased Gucci may be able share some insight about Bo and his breeding program, I'll talk a little about Romeo.

Romeo's breeder, an SV working judge, tends to want dogs that work from the looks of what he has produced with Camillo who won a performance award at the sieger show in Germany being the latest of his successes I'm aware of,,,,besides the VA1 female that is.

Here you have a breeder that for years has bred to not necessarily the most popular dog but the best dog he thought for his female and generation after generation has consistently bred top placing conformation with excellent temperament for work. 

So if we ask was Camillo a result of planning or luck, I think there's a bit of planning that went into it and Camillo was the result of a predictable breeding.

Just want to say thanks to Randy for turning this into a very interesting and informative thread. And to Ibrahim for the work you put into it.

best,
Rick Atchley

There's many others that can contribute. I'm hoping some will. Sadly all the real talent was driven from this board years ago.

Randy,

What you said above is one of the best informative, true and honest posts I read on this forum so far, arn't we blessed to have members like yourself on this forum and more importantly in the life itself !! Thank you for sharing your experience, thoughts and knowledge with us, I find that very generous of you.

Ibrahim

Dog1...BANG ON!

Ghandi and Yasko are popping up. I don't have any accumulation of information on either of them. I do have a yasko daughter that works very well. Her work is good, I'd say excellent. Her SchH2 judge commented; "We shouldn't sell dogs like this to America." Hopefully someone else can contribute.

Natz is producing excellent character, pigment and structure.  Here is a link to some of the progeny Natz has produced

http://web.me.com/huntshep/Site_14/Natz_Progeny.html

Martha

Natz is a nice dog; I like him. Would you post some of his trial scores and levels of competitive participation since earning his Sch 3 so that his temperament and ability can be (somewhat) further extrapolated. Thanks in advance.... Kevin Nance

Nice post & Thank you Kevin....

It is one thing to acknowledge solid ability as they are provably demonstrated by examples of dogs that are still among the living such as Ule, Vandal, Aeros, Juneau.... or to talk of dogs that provably demonstrated in the past and now are remembered as ancestral names on a pedigree chart......

But it is totally different to take any current dog and wax large on their working ability simply upon their ancestry.....

Would any one claim VA ratings based on ancestry without actually earning it at a National Breed show?

Working ability is not encapsulated in the behavior displayed by a single bite.....
The following are some of the characteristics required:
1. Constant Engagement with environment...... the dog is always curious and will investigate every overturned stone in its vicinity.
2. Biddablity.... the dog will always want to please its handler
3. Ability to switch drives..... can move from guarding to aggression to stand by without difficulty in such transitions
4. Anatomic Architecture that permits the ability to work as long as the desire to work still exists...... this means a dog that can still do a meter jump 7-8 years...... mind you for those who claim that a shepherd is a trotting dog and that tending sheep doesn't require jumping.... 
... THE VERY FIRST EXERCISE IN HERDING requires the dog to jump into the sheep pen from outside and move to the gate of the pen while the shepherd gets ready to open the gate..... NO JUMP NO HERDING!..... & no shepherd can afford to have all his investment in a trained dog disappear with a dog that can work only till age 4 or 5.

To use the brush of ancestral performance and paint large bold swipes across entire pedigrees without current proven working members is flawed analysis at best .... and a marketing hype aimed to delude the ignorant at worst 

There is more & I will continue later... since I have to go to work now....

Ravi Iyer
Vienna, VA