standard of our German Shepherd - Page 2

"sheeps" ROFLMAO I crack myself up!

My opinion is that we must change standard. If you have proportional big dog with correct anatomy you will have not got problems with working ability, endurance and health. And that is not problem for me. Problem is in two things: First problem is judge and judging. Judge must stop to give advantage to bigger dogs. They must try to find objective way in comparing and positioning different sized dogs. It is not fair to disadvantage correct and middle sized dogs. I can understand that is hard but judges must be more real. Specially if we someday rise height in standard. And people are much higher today then people from time starting standard of GSD. We must know that every day we will have greater unsatisfactory contacts with our dogs as we rise and dogs no. I am 1,9 meter tall and I have problem in contact and controlling middle sized males and females in all, too. I am addicted to touch and have a contact with my left hand on dog on my left side and I have problem with all smaller dogs because I must bend my backbone to compensate differences in height. And that is big problem in run or moving. Second problem is market. Market in all fields are very precise polarized and all intermediate market products loose battle and rapidly disappear. If we have an eye in GSD as market product from dog family we can clearly see that people wants and buy small or big dog not middle sized dogs. And then we have problem now to placing high quantity GSD out of our common breeding programs and find for all of them warm homes. If market wants big dogs we must improve that characteristics or in other way we will rapidly in future decrease our breeding programs and without quantity we will loose quality and our game will be stopped. And GSD size is not the only problem for decreasing interest for GSD on dog market. Another one is loosing working ability and inborn instincts in GSD. But that is another story.

Amir, I strongly disagree that if the dog is proportioned correctly, oversize won't hinder its ability to work. In most cases, oversize will definitely effect the endurance and agility of any dog. My original breed is one of the sleddogs and no musher wants oversized dogs on his/her team. They hold the others back. Even though the GSD is not a team dog, he still needs the endurance to survive as a herding dog in the worse conditions Germany has offer. Correct size would be one of the most important survival characteristics for a GSD. Too big, no endurance; too small, not enough strength. Sure big dogs can do Schutzhund, but can they work tirelessly day in day out herding sheep or doing search and rescue, bringing down the bad guys, etc.? Training a few hours per day in Schutzhund is not the same as requiring a dog to herd and guard sheep and its master 24/7. It's not apples to apples by any stretch. I doubt that many on this board have actually worked a GSD as the breed is intended to work. Those who own big dogs tend to prefer and tout them as correct and the same goes for the too small dogs. Most of us do not know what it takes to survive in a real working environment. All we have is the standard as written by the foundation breeders. Changing the standard to accept a bigger dog instead of breeding to the standard is really not a good idea IMO. There is a reason for the ideal size per the breed standard; it's all about survival characteristics.

The fact that our dogs are getting bigger and bigger does not mean that SV will chnage the standard because they will not. Amir is right in saying that judges are the problem. For a long time now measuring sticks have been pushed down to bring 68 cm high dogs into the standard. That logically led the breeders to continue breeding large dogs and now they find themselves in position that once winners are being disqualified or in the best case scenario at the back of the line.What can such breeders do? Live with it or try to push hard for change of standard and I think they will go for the second option. Now to the market. Amir wrote: "Second problem is market. Market in all fields are very precise polarized and all intermediate market products loose battle and rapidly disappear. If we have an eye in GSD as market product from dog family we can clearly see that people wants and buy small or big dog not middle sized dogs. And then we have problem now to placing high quantity GSD out of our common breeding programs and find for all of them warm homes. If market wants big dogs we must improve that characteristics or in other way we will rapidly in future decrease our breeding programs and without quantity we will loose quality and our game will be stopped." I agree that MARKET is "the problem", for some people. The moment this wonderfull breed was perceived as a "marketable item" its downfall started (losing working ability). Malinois is next in line. It already happened to some other breeds. We humans have altered a lot of things to suit our "needs at particular moment" and we lived to regret it. Changing the standard to save someone's MARKET is a bit to much for my taste. I need a better reason.

Just need to do away with the showline because this is the way the standard is going. Shepherds are working dogs if people don't like it then get a poodle. Showline dogs can not do the work properly and safely.

hi all reading this makes me laf why do away with showlines i have a correct yessssss correct size famale who would work she has sch1 and a korung 1 from germany and a breed survey class1 from england and a proven show record SO what is wrong with showline breeding? dragon jeanette

Do away with showlines? Its a bit radical dont you think? Are you so sure that work lines are within the standard? Lets not revive the old subject "working VS showline". Lets just agree that we dissagree. We should bring our dogs back into the prescribed standard. I am sure that we all have one copy at home. We should read it over and over again and then compare our dogs against the standard. Most importantly, we must be honest at least to ourselves.

Agree with Yvette.  Bigger dogs loses agility.
In addition, from working point of view, one wants an OPTIMAL size dog that does the job, not an "over-sized" dog that is an overkill.  Bigger dog eats more, which is against the principle of a working dog.  Friends from the police dog unit also mentioned that one of the reasons that they are using more mals these days is because mals eat less.