Universal Seiger & Golden Middle - Page 2

To be quite honest I would be much, much more proud to breed a universal seiger one day than even a VA dog. (Of course both would be nice- we can dream, right?)

Someone said once that the term "Golden MIddle" was used by breeders to market puppies from parents that don't excell at anything. I think oftentimes this is sadly true. Besides, this kind of goes along with what I said in the "strong dog" post...it all boils down to opinion.

I agree with Chris noticing that it is a problem of  OBEDIENCE  and not in drive... A SL can also have strong drive like that of WL and WL dogs nowadays are getting V-ratings due to broadening of the understanding-of and sticking to standard conformation... The problem that is  "lack of obedience"  which may I now ask... if it is the breeder to fault or lack of good trainers ??? I am now in a hunt for a good set of conformation litter and will pick the most responsive and human obedient pup... I will rest the drive part in development, knowing that it can be developed... but obedience is one hard thing to develop nowadays without the use of a prong-collar...

Obedience is definitely part of the equasion, although people tend to focus only on the protection phase. The dog must possess be resilient enough to recover from a fair correction, (hardness) yet not so damned hard you have to choke it every other day to re-establish dominance issue forgotten overnight. The dog MUST also have a strong willingness to please its handler and truly enjoy the work. Its almost impossible to do anything with a dog that couldn't care less for toys or treats, doesn't enjoy the work, never really bonds with a handler. My days of training with a leash in one hand and a 2 x 4 in the other are definitely OVER.   Give me the ones that fall out of their mother asking "What can I do for you?" every time anymore.

I also have trouble "loving," being proud of a dog that is so butt-ugly one might suspect it was a mix breed if one didn't know better. They don't have to be high V or VA, but they DO have to LOOK LIKE a GSD!

Silbersee: You bring back a lot of memories. How ell I remember all the times I was approached with my proud sable dog at Sieger shows and asked that same question, over and over: "You are plannign to SHOW your gray dog in this event, are you?"

The fin part came later, when you beat them in the ring, and they would retend they'd never met you in the bar on Sunday night.

Ha ha ha. Keep breeding those gorgeous gray dogs!

SS

Excelent posts, everyone.  I agree that show & working line breeders need to stand together and appreciate each other.  I think there will always be specialists and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.  However;  I think it's great to have this forum where people on both sides of this fence can talk constructively about bringing the lines closer and not resort to anger.  Perhaps it's this kind of thinking that will one day make the "Universal" dog more common than the "specialists".

Marci,

I should clarify what I meant:

Some of the showline dogs do not possess the necessary hardness anymore to withstand the pressure of obedience. Sorry that I did not make that clear enough.  And yes, some of the WL dogs possess too much of it, like Shelley mentioned. 

As to picking a "most obedient" puppy from a litter: I am not so sure that this would be a right thing to do, maybe in a WL litter, but not really in a SL litter. But everybody is looking for different traits in a puppy, who knows.

Chris