high drive show lines? - Page 4

Rexy - thanks for your input.......

MY DINKIE IS A HIGH LINE DOG WITH OVER THE TOP DRIVES. I CANNOT POST A PED AS HIS BLOODLINES ARE FROM GERMAN SPIES. THEY COULD HAVE SHOWN ME THE PAPERS BUT THEN THEY WOULD HAVE HAD TO KILL ME.

Get,em dink!!!

Vilo v Arminius
I agree with Bob McKown on all posts here. The problem is that it is wishful thinking to breed show and work dogs in one type. I think it is too late for that. If it would be attempted now  by general public here in USA without control of a breed warden then it would destroy the workability. In Europe sometimes there are introduced into t he work line high quality show dogs with super workability in order to improve structure and refresh the blood line of new genes. Vilo V Arminius was such a dog. However I would caution to do it without tremendous experience. There is another problem. Many misguided dog people or people who got burned by show dogs in work line will not have anything to do with this. And people vote with their $$$$and thus we have show lines and work lines. And that is the way the cookie crumbles.
Prager Hans
http://www.alpinek9.com  

Vilo was AWSOME!

Well said, Prager. I would like to incorporate a WL dog into my showlines, but I am very cautious as many work/show crosses carry the negavtives rather than the positives of their respective line. I just bred my SL female to a dog who is 3/4 SL, 1/4 DDR, wish us luck as it is unlikely she conceived but it was a "safe" choice for me and I think it will yield really great dogs.

Here in Australia perhaps due to the non requirement for GSD's to pass any form of working trial, Schutzhund/agility to qualify into the show ring as occurs in other countries, the workability of the breed is in a poor state. The Australian market is flooded with show lines primarily derived from German show lines bred for softness and conformation. There are some dedicated working lines in very limited supply that actually sell for 3 times that of a top conformation line and if you can find a working line puppy for sale, they are hugely expensive in comparison.

There are some show line breeders who maintain workability and hardness in the breed but are increasingly few and far between. The GSD in Australia is projected mostly as a soft natured friendly and elegant pet, more consistant with a Golden Retriever type temperament which has reached a point that owning a drivey hard temperament GSD is looked upon as a faulty dog especially any display of civil aggression sought after in protection and security work. 

The trend which I find extremely frustrating is the constant labelling of hard temperament dogs as fear biters with behavioural issues which is not always the case. It appears that soft GSD's are so mainstream that when encountering a true civil dog hard as nails in guardian instinct, they are condemned as having faulty temperaments which is wrong.

My boy at 14 months red flagged as having behavioual issues for trying to nail the vet diagnosed as a fear biter when tested by a police K9 trainer,  diagnosed him as good hard dog with fine prospects in protection and security work???. Personally, I can't see how a soft friendly GSD scared of it's own shadow can be trained into a fierce protection dog without having instinctive civil drives, perhaps I am wrong???.  

Rexy, thanks for an honest post and assessment of the showlines in Australia. Let's see, Europe...showlines are soft, .....United States...showlines are soft.....Australia..showlines are soft. (I will say that some of the eastern bloc countries like (Hungary, Czech republic,etc. have showlines with nice drives). United Kingdom...showlines are soft.  Now I know some of the showline people get angry at me for continually pointing this out, but I am not the reason this is the case. If somebody doesn't continually point out the facts, without fear of people being angry at them, the spiral will certainly continue. People don't change when they think every thing is fine. If you look at some of the real nice looking Czech dogs with KK1 conformation and plenty of good temperament, you will see some showlines mixed in to improve structure, but not enough to affect working. You can't do it the way of mixing one or two working dogs into showlines and then go back to the concentrated junk. You have to give up the "Black and Red" mentality. Whoever died and said that quality showdogs have to be Black and Red??? Worst thing that ever happened to the seiger show!!!

Finally a reasonable response to an open ended question.  Two voices of reason.  If the "kennel blindness" and excuses for the breed continue, it can never get better.  I remember the discussion that followed the Sieger Show and the quality, or lack thereof, of the protection phase of the working dogs.  Dogs that barely held a grip, and in some cases actually fell off of the arm, were given ratings of Pronounced.  Excuse after excuse was given for inferior work instead admission that the breed is spiraling downward.  Once again the FCI World Championship is dominated by the Malinois, 8 out of the top 10 and 17 of the top 25.  In a sport, albeit the FCI is IPO and not SchH, that was developed to test the quality and fitness of the GSD, they only dominate at Shepherd only specialties like the Bundessieger and WUSV.  And, in comparison of the show/working stock, how many show line dogs actually make it to the premier competitions?  Very few, maybe one, two or three out of an entry of somewhere near 100?  That's a pretty poor showing in my opinion, and yet we talk about perpetuating the problem by taking an average dog and breeding it yet again, multiple times, maybe 8 in total, and adding @50 more average animals to the gene pool?  How is that making the breed better?

So if someone manages to get a Czech black and tan show line bitch with above normal protection drives bitch and breeds it to the same, isn't that a step up for the showline sector? Seems to me that this would be helping and not hurting the whole problem. Breeding for beauty and drive, not just drive and not just beauty. What say you?