some breed history - Page 2

Blitzen,Its perhaps that people whether owners of pet/show/work cannot recognize the venues that the individual pocesses...even if all of the venues of the true gsd of long ago are not there.It saddens my heart to see all of these crippled gsd's produced...whether in structure or of good tempermant.People utilize their dogs for their gain.I am so glad that I have an elder beacon of light that is like an angel to me.her dogs will go to good service.She was there during the split.I will not mention her name ever.

I personally would not promote this link. There are major mis-statements and inaccuacies in it.  Here is just one. Meet 1949-1950 Double Grand Victor Kirk of San Miguel  http://www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/kdogs/KirkSanMiguel.html  . May I quote "Kirk by the way was an all black". This was a good decade an a half before Bernd Kallengarten - who by the way I liked and liked his progeny. They had the suspension which the Lance lines lacked which is why the cross worked so well. He produced daughters and granddaughters that were big dark very doggy bitches but you looked at them and just knew they would produce fantastic sons. See www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/BDOGS/Bernd.html

The author is obviously totally ignorant as to the contribution of two kennels that were known to specialize in blacks and existed long before Bernd came to these shores.  The first is the Maur Ray Kennel Reg. - owned by Maureen Yentzen who contributed much valuable information to GSD color genetics.  M-R was around in the 1940's and perhaps early than that. Here is a piece she wrote about 1937 & 1938 GV Ch. Pfeffer v Bern   http://www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/pdogs/PfefferBernd.html

The second is the Jeenellyn Kennel which started in the late 50's and got much of it's foundation stock from Maur Ray.  Here is their page about black gsds in America  http://www.geocities.com/jeenellyn33/nablackdogs.html

By the way if you scroll thru the dogs shown here http://www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/BDOGS/index.html  and here http://www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/index.html you can get a flavor of some of the history. I think you will note that many of the dogs the Nova Scotia refers to as "All American" are anything but including Lance who really was primarily German import breeding  http://www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/Ldogs/LanceFranJo.html. Except for a time during WW2 (and even some imports made their way here such as the ones Ernie Loeb was able to import) Americans actively used imports up to the early 70's. Even in the late 70's there were some such as VA Masko Konigstein http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/437175.html. Met both him and his son Benji and really like both of them. He stills shows up in the odd "american" pedigree. See http://home.mcn.net/~lodestar/ryker.htm. The reality to quote Pogo "we have met the enemy and he is us". The prime difference after WW2 is Germans took Axel Deininghauser daughters and granddaughters to R litter Onsbruckerland males and the Americans took R litter bitches to Axel males tho the Americans also had a gene pool that was more inbred on Pferrer because of WW2. But both selected for different things and voila here we are today.  Note the selection was not always good on either side - I remember the HORRIBLY roached faded tighty tightly ligamented German dogs from the 70s and 80s that frankly my dear were butt ugly for the most part. This coming from someone that has had German lines since 1978. That is part of the reason Americans stopped using impor

TIG, why don't you write the real story?

 That is part of the reason Americans stopped using imports. The sine curve was too different and too steep at that point.  By that I mean if you look at the history of GSDs in this country and German it is like two equal but opposing sine curves. There are points where they meet and cross and that is when the type has been pretty similiar on both sides of the pond so it is easy to use imports. There are times that the type radically differs and historically that was a result of the WWars and the depression to a degree closing down access to imports. In the 80s, the Martin brothers introduced another factor with the exportation of the SV system and judging as a whole thus insuring wholesale exportation of dogs not just the exportation a few highly valued individuals as it was in the past. This virtually insured that imports would not be used on the American side because now it was a competing system. There have always been a few cross over people - some with good success (ex Dan Smith) - but few and far between.