Left ear will not stand all the time - Page 2

It is true that you can play some tricks on nature, but you will pay for them later on in your breeding program. This is supposed to be a completely natural breed. They should not need anything like this ear-taping to make them develop properly. And when you cheat the system with surgery and tricks, you are sidestepping the selection process, so you cannot really say that you are doing anything to improve the breed. This is the talk that hypocrites make!

LOL.. I have to say something more. I remember back in the mid-70's, the American breeders were doing all this nonsense with ear taping. You could go to any specialty show and see all the young dogs with tape and moleskin in their ears. I watched this scene once with all of these young adults on leads with their handlers, and one young woman was gaiting her dog, running at his side and watching his movement. She did not see the trash can they were approaching. That lead hit the trash can with the girl on one side and the dog on the other.. They "clotheslined" it and it went down with a bang! Not only that dog, but every other young dog in earshot was scrambling, all in a panic. They were all spooks!!! And ridiculously over angulated, to boot! This is exactly what so many of us wanted to get away from when we started to go to Germany for real working dogs, real German Shepherds. That was when NASA and Schuthund USA began.. I remember when USA was nothing more than a magazine, called "Schutzhund USA". Now, it's really funny how things come around full circle. The dogs in Germany are getting more and more like the American show dogs were, starting back in the 70's with the GV Ch. Lance of Fran-Jo craze! The Martin brothers did the same thing for the breed in Germany, and made it into a commercial fad item with a narrow gene-pool. Now, with all the problems like soft ears, bad hips and retained testes, the breeders have no one to blame but themselves. The original breed was not good enough, I guess, so it was re-created.. But into what, and where is it going?

Good post, DDR-DSH. I am not ready to give up though. I believe that we can by careful breeding avoid the problems while retaining the advances that have been made. Best wishes, Jonah