Wanted ! 30 inch at withers male or Female - Page 8

It is amazing how many people who didnt live in east germany claim to know so much about it and its dogs.

well then she should knowwhat i wrote is correct

Sunsilver, the dogs as Tina described already existed. There was no need to reinvent the breed. In east germany there were many GSDs bred which were oversized, big boned with bold heads. Very protective of property and family, but at the same time very gentle even to strangers unless there was an obvious threat.

Those dogs usual did not make it in the registry because of the size, but truly, back then only few people cared about papers. Some of them were presented at registration shows normally at age 2, and were registered without a registered mother/father in the books. Some of those GSD had thicker stock coat or some more feathering on the belly, legs and tail, but were by no means long coated GSDs as you see today.

There were several of those dogs within my family. Mostly black and mustard yellow, or completely black. Some fo the pups went to the Czechs as we lived close to the border for Goods you couldnt get in east germany in return. Others usual went to small Farms (Bauernhoefe) as they were suited well for that.

I will attach a pic of my last pup of "our" line. He looked like his father who was 73 cm at the shoulder and weighted arround 55 kg. In the pic he is 5 months old. This is an old photograph from the 90s, the yellow coloring got lost during scanning. Sadly he got killed as I left him with a friend while I had to go to a job seminar. Special thanks to US costums/USPS which lost part of my packaging during my move to the US, including all of my pictures.

Only part of the east german dogs were used as Grenzhund or Diensthund, and it was absolutely not the purpose that they were bred for. The majority of the dogs and the breed purpose was to make an allrounder of stable temperament, fit to do any kind of work you throw at them, robust and healthy, as well as powerfull enough to protect your livestock or home, and to impress anybody who just thought of implementing harm on you or your property. The upmost difference towards other lines is that they are bred to think and act for themself, and today its almost impossible to find a more clear headed dog then out of DDR lines.

Yes, they have changed somewhat. They are smaller in size today to comply with the SV standards. Back then it didnt really matter if the dog was registered or not. The registration was done at the breed survey at age 2. If you had an outstanding exemplar of noneregistered parents, it happened that either the dog was registered without parents or the dog became offspring of  another registerd dog. A little money or a goody hard to get at this time got you a long way. (excuse my english regards to the grammar) My last pups dad was 73cm at the shoulder, he was denied registration because of the size, and this was back in the early 90s after the wall came down. The bigger size dogs had to "die" out, as the SV already had its fingers over everything. And to understand the times better, everything that came from east germany had to be simply bad-bad-bad...

DDR dogs are very well capable of high level sport, and they do have a very nice prey drive. The problem is that too many people doing the sport want to see imediate results with less effort of training. Also the trend is that the earlier you can title a dog the better it must be, and can be earlier put up as stud. You can not train a DDR dog like that, they are all puppy for quiet a while. You build carefully upon on what they offer to you. The relationship and teamwork is your goal, not a quick title.