Capt. Stephanitz - Page 3

Its not so much what bloodlines but more in the selection of breed stock and the consideration of all the proper traits, not just the ones that serve limited uses.
The dog doesn't have to be beautiful, and the dog doesn't have to be a robot performing routines.
It does need the original standards set forth in the beginning, but honestly Max didn't have the problems we have now to weed out of his breeders in the beginning. 
No matter what you think about todays standards they don't address the real root of the GSD.
Its relationship to its owner.   I see no test for this except in the eyes of the one who actually lives with his animal and sees these traits in day to day life.   How do you title that?
Then there is the health issue.     Over population, and the pet industry.  
In the old days they didn't feel the need to save every animal.
Your not going to change whats already out there, but a breeder alone could raise a proper GSD with less effort than you think.
Its all in the eye of the beholder isn't it.

They are already there in my opinion.
Too much tunnel vision and not enough consideration for whats really important.

How many agree with Stephanitz's philosophies regarding the breed? Training? Manwork? Temperament? Conformation? Also is he credited with developing showlines, workinglines or both?

I think that we need to look at the man and the time he lived in. We have a guy that was raised in a family of privilege. He wanted to be a farmer but his family deemed that that unsuitable because people of his status didn’t farm. During his time the time there was a tendency to romanticize the life of the lower classes. You see it again and again in European art and literature. The humble but happy peasant. I think he had romantic notion of the peasant’s dogs. From the very start the GSD and his job was based on an idyllic notion not reality. In reality both the dog’s and people had a very hard life. From reading his writings I also believe that Vom Stephanitz was a believer in eugenics and has affected the way he looked at dogs.

I have read everything that I can find and I have never read about Vom Stephanitz ever holding a leash in his hand. Never. In all of the accounts that he writes of he never says “I did….. with a dog”. He never writes about herding with a dog. He never writes about working a schutzhund. Why not? Even when he speaks about the qualities of it is always in a type of language that could come from things he heard others say about the dog.

So what I think about Vom Stephanitz is that he was an academic that loved dogs and studied a lot about them. But I don’t think he ever really got down in the trenches with the dogs. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se. During his time most people of his class never did anything with their hands, which was for the underclass. But how much can you really know if you don’t get down and dirty and work with the dogs? Would he have been one of those people that knows it all on the internet but never works a dog, which we see today?

The real work of developing the working dogs was left to other members of Pollux/SV. Vom Stephanitz was a figurehead that had the money and influence to get things done and make the club and breed happen. But I think that he was not the guy to really “made”

. But I think that he was not the guy to really “made” the GSD.

How did Vom Stephanitz feel about dog shows? Well let’s remember that the SV was showing dogs decades before the first working trial. So what do you think was a priority?

This site is quite interesting if you want more information on Capt. Stephanitz.

http://maxvstephanitz.homestead.com/