German shepherd breeders specially ddr pls answer - Page 5

I was talking to a member here and they said the same thing to me. I know this member would not lie. Nothing to gain in that case it explains a lot. It very common for dog to lose condition after surgery. Also the weather was very hot at the time dog was obviously at that time just coping with the circumstances. Heard she is in good form and alot better photogenic. Best of luck to the owner

That's the danger of posting pix which don't say who/where they belong. I accept that there may be some loss of condition after spaying (although exactly how 'recent' was it ?) but I am not at all happy that this should mean a dog then looks like a hat-rack with every rib showing. That is my opinion; I am entitled to hold it, even if others do not agree with me.

The build, general condition, and overall conformation of this bitch as pictured is not to my taste. I posted all through that it was 'my opinion'; unlike a lot of people I did not, & do not, generalise that every dog in whatever subset in the breed is (whatever), nor state that as a fact. I suspect she still would not be to my taste even were she, post-operatively, much better fleshed. JMO, folks.

I made no comment on her working abilities or temperament as you cannot get that from one still photograph. Nor is it possible to see whether hips and elbows are, or are not, perfect.

She was not bred for your taste, lol. Nor was she bred to be quite so racy in shape. She was the only one out of 12 pups that developed the raciness.that's why she was spayed after hips and elbows done. Her dam is 85 pounds, her sire 70 pounds. It had been less than a month since she was spayed and the weather was upper 90s so lean is better than fat for any dog to tolerate such heat. Not a hat rack as her hips and spine were well fleshed ribs showing more while breathing hard during exercise. Overall, a well put together athletic bitch. At least her hocks are not striking the ground and her back is not roached and she doesn't have a sagging gut and flopping dewlap under her neck. She is bred for endurance in work which she has in spades.

the pic on page one re' the showline dog, in all fairness to the showlines, that dog looks like she is a year or younger and one that does not get enough exercise. her chest is very under developed IMO. My 6 month old dogs are thicker then that, and i don t even think the one next to her is a very good representative of the DDR dogs, either then or now.,
That last pic is the very definition of the DDR build, again, IMO

Reddingo
is that your dog?
no one judges her temperament or abilities. discussion mainly concern of her body constitution, which is absolutely not GSD type.
if her head in pic be blanked out, i doubt anyone could be certain to what kind of breed she belong.
and look, surgery didn't shrink her volume to how she appears in photo and issue isn't in absence of fat. quite contrary - fat is not substitution of bones and muscles and fat dog looks no less ugly than starved to death one.
anyway, good to hear she won't be used in breeding. maybe she is really good in all aspects other than build. but breed means not only temperamental/psychological condition of dogs but also visual appearance/recognition. the experiments, which have brought into breed the subbranch of pretty much useless show dogs, more than enough to abstain from experimenting on the remnants of GSD breed.

Hundmutter
there are no single dog in show breeding with a correct, efficient physical build.
even if such dog might spiritually have great working aptitude, physiology won't let utilize it to full extend.

ValK & Reddingo - can you see my icon photo at the top of all my posts ? It is a red&black dog with 6 German Siegers and 5 UK Champions in his breeding.

Are his hocks on the ground ? NO. Is he enormously oversized ? NO - @ 66.5, he was oversize on height ... by .5 cm. Half a centimetre, that's less than half an inch. Is he fat ? NO but you cannot see a single rib in his (one, still) photo.  I have had dogs which chased and caught rabbits regularly; you could see their last 2 ribs ALWAYS, you could NEVER see them look skinny with the entire rack of ribs showing. 

Does he have a roached back ? Not unless you see an excess curve where one does not exist.

Were his hips good ? YES. 3:3=6 (KC/BVA). Sorry we were not doing elbows when he was around to be assessed, but as he lived with me I know that he never had a day lame. He also had longevity, as did his half-bro mentioned in the next para, with both going into double figures. 

Was he a great dog ? NO.  He was overshot, for a start; never won more than one Show prize in his life, and he 'stood alone' for that one ! But his half-brother, now that was a different story.  [ Go to VIDEX OMAR OF DEVAT in the Pedigree Search.  This was posted by his, now deceased, owner/breeder herself and so is in the public domain.]  Okay that was 20 years ago, now, but the breed has not changed so very much, in the UK or Germany, in that time. The reason I do not put up pics on PDB (apart from being crap at the technology !) is THEY WERE NOT MY DOGS and if I could not obtain permission to publish them, I would not feel comfortable to do so.

No, Reddingo, of course my dog and these others in my care were not bred for your preferences, either, but I would not try to shoot down your opinion of any of them if you saw them. I would just agree to differ with you ! 

As ValK says, surgery does not account for all in the sable's picture;  if you are a fit man with a visible 'six-pack', does that vanish overnight if you have an appendectomy ?  So unless the spay was other than elective and this bitch was ill for a while with something that eventually necessitated it,  or had suddenly had a Pyo, I would not expect such a dramatic effect on her body.  And possibly not even then !

 

If you compare any dog to the GSD Standard (and I mean the German / FCI one) then if you can justify how that particular dog looks in relation to it, all well and good; but if you can't, you do not have a 'real' GSD; you may have an EXCELLENT 'working dog'; and yes all GSDs should be able to work;  but you could have an excellent worker that was half Coonhound, or a GSD/Labrador mix -or even a GSD / Mali mix. ;-)  Does NOT make them a good dog structurally, by the opinion of the creators of the breed; does not mean the Standard was wrong or could not be justified when it was drawn up for the breed ( I think we can all agree there are flaws in how it has been interpreted by many 'judges' & breeders, in many places, over the years since !).  If you are quite happy with the dog you end up with, all well and good, that is your choice. But do not be surprised and go all defensive when someone else 'in the breed' says they do not like your dog.

A thought: IF the 'DDR' type was deliberately bred to be that ... shall we be polite and call it 'wiry' ? ... then it clearly bore no comparison to the early GSDs in the breed, as I cannot recall seeing ONE picture published by & for the Captain and others associated in the early days, turn of the 19th Century and up to the, say, 1930s, (I.E. before there was any split into Work and Show lines) when promoting their breed, that has that structure. These early examples may look very different to todays dogs, particularly Showdogs, particularly American Showdogs; but they do not look like the sable bitch above, either.

So if she is acknowledged to be DDR 'type', I have to ask, when people were breeding these 'Border' dogs, why did they use mostly GSDs, why did they stick roughly to that type and breed definition, why did they sell some of them on as 'GSDs'; and should we, IN GSDs today, claim them as ANYTHING TO DO WITH US & OUR BREED AT ALL ?   Tinkering around with the basic recipe has been a universal problem, from early on; it's not just an aberation of show breeders and their ilk in more recent times.  And every maverick thinks THEY are right, and their sort of dog is the correct one. Who is to say ???

Well, you certainly are not agreeing to disagree, are you? I didn't shoot you down, just gave an explanation about the sable bitch. And I did not disparage your dog in your avitar, didn't even look at it, and he is not a picture of every gsl ever bred .Did you not notice in my post that she was not bred to be racey in form and was the only one to turn out such. And that she has been spayed specifically because of her racey form. She has been selected out of any possibility of any one breeding her inspite of all her excellent characteristics.
Btw, you stated something to the effect, this is the danger of posting pictures. Well, this picture was taken from another forum without permission, a violation of tos I believe. Further, you are acting as though that " sable bitch" is single handedly taking down the breed, even though she is spayed and has never been bred, came out of an 80 pound Czech/ wgwl bitch and a 70+ pound ddr/wgwl/Czech male. Have a look in the show rings in gsl classes and have a look at the work they do or don't. Ever see the pictures of the actual herding gsd in the captain's book they are very similar to " that sable bitch".

Curious, are the rabbits your dogs regularly catch bred and raised in a hutch, black and white spotted and weigh around fifteen pounds, lol.

Do you see hip bones and spine protruding on " that sable bitch"? No. Takes more that seeing ribs, especially on a nice dry young dog to declare what some appear to be suggesting that the dog is being starved...or are you suggesting she is gentically lean like a greyhound? That appears to be closer to truth, however she is the bastard in the litter. Guess the Captain didn't eliminate this genes completely, they still pop up sometimes ( so often it seems to put some people into a tailspin when they see it)

One should not get so worked up over one lifted picture of a dog. The breed has greater issues than ' that ( spayed) sable bitch".

Have a Merry Christmas and hug your dog ( no matter it's form :-)

Maybe this clip of a littermate sister to ' that sable bitch' at two years old in her first trial a thousand miles from home in the pouring rain, will calm you down and console everyone that the breeder is not destroying the breed  with ' that sable bitch' who is spayed and never been bred.

https://youtu.be/kpufnZzBgkw

Personally I would much rather have that build of dog (the sable bitch) actually working with me than 75% of the "normal" build GSDs that I see (that are actually oversized). I understand that it isn't the most visually pleasing dog but still within standard right? And wasn't GSD supposed to be first and worse most working dog? I'm not advocating breeding dogs out of standard. Probably has tons of energy and looks very agile, a lot easier to work with in tight spaces than the average 80/90 lb male.