The decline of the German Shepherd character - Page 74

Hans your A+1=A is physically impossible, the closest you will get is A+1=(b)A+(c)1=D where 0 < b and c < 1. and that on a miracle day, in fact you in reality have A +1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+B+1......all with their own 0 < b,c,d,e,f,g,h......< 1 just on one side then you have same for every dog in ancestry. I get breeders often rely on gullible people but this is an international forum, some of us went to school. I wont stand for BS being passed off as science.

I have to express some disappointment at this point in the discussion particularly with more than 39,000 viewings. The overriding factor is that Character seems to be defined by bite work and aggression. I think that as the discussion is mainly based on opinion from the USA that geographically the basis for conclusions is too narrow. Also, the input from the USA is from too few posters especially the more experienced people from both sides. Many of the posters have never bred a litter and, therefore, are theory based and not all of the theories are sound. It doesn’t matter whether you are pro working dogs, or, show dogs the only way to get to really have an understanding of Character is to breed a litter. However, it does not stop there because to determine the direction in the best interests of the breed as a whole people then have to breed something from that first litter and again from the next generation and so on. The correct anatomy laid down in the breed standard is a characteristic that we do not want to lose and both Working and Show people have lost sight of that.

We all seem to agree that there are many aspects to Character but very few posters have defined the importance of Character as a whole that represents the inherited and true makeup of the GSD. What happens after the puppies go to their new homes is a separate topic based on what the owners want to achieve and, therefore, it follows that Character development becomes man made for better or worse. How man made development can improve future generations is only speculative.

Mackenzie

I must say that the system of lines as described can work in a closed and controlled breedingprogram such as Pohranicni straze was and now at Jinopo

when you take a male with certain qualities and breed him to several females and keep the fathertypical dogs and exclude the rest from breeding you can build a line  with similair qualities

this is basically the same as phenotypical selection and phenotype follows genotype

than you can lock in these traits by linebreeding BUT ONLY if you use dogs for breeding that carry these same traits, not with just any puppy from that line

the problem is that as soon as you take the dogs out of the controlled program and all dogs get bred to famous dogs showinners and such, and also the pups that are not fathertypical  will be used for breeding  the system will loose its power

In todays world we could create such lines from lets say Tom leefdaelhof or tyson schiffslache , but directly we could see were it wouldnot function if we follow the line of Tom-Eros-Como and we see that it is of greater importance to select the right females and right pups again and again

so will every tyson schiffslache son be fathertypical no, but some, coming from the right females will be and if they wood have been the only ones used for breeding and only to good females the system could work, unfortunately in todays world everything good and bad will be bred to everything good and bad and than it doesnot matter so much anymore who the sires great grandfather was

 

 

mackenzie in wildlife a litter is born from the strongest possible parents, the pups grow up and the weak ones cant get food and die or get eaten themselves, so only the strong ones survive and breed again

now as long as we people choose to nurture and save the weak ones, be it for money or for sentimental reasons, people are not helping and creating weaker animals

Now to answer your question about decline, do we answer that based on the strong pups born from the strong dogs or based on the pups born from the dogs that would never survive and breed in the wild

same goes for the lines theory, do we breed from the strong tyson schiffslche offspring only  or de we breed just any Tyson offspring just because his name is on the papers

 

Duke - Your opening paragraph is amazing. You really got me on that one.

You have not answered my question on decline at all. You are not only failing to describe character but attempting to compare the wild with the inherited character of the working dog. The two are as different as chalk and cheese. The working dog is not survival based. He does not have to kill anything including helpers and trainers.

What exactly has Tyson got to do with this topic. He is not the only male in the breed.

Mackenzie

Mackenzie

first Tyson is example dog, you can change his name for any other

secondly , Decline is up to selection and wildlife example is all about selection

third: do we measure decline by the pups of a petdog breeder who is just producing pups from a dog coming from a famous dog, or do we measure decline  by the pups from serious breeder that bred strong combination from same famous dog and a strong female

 

Fourth Caracter , if we see caracter as total package of all drives, that will include prey and defencedrive and thus will include biting, agression in dogs is naturally there, if it comes to surviving(mating/food/defence on atacs)

 

fifth, if you say that todays dogs cannot be compared to wildlife you cannot be more wrong, genetics work the same on both, only difference is selection which is fucked up by humans because of money and sentimental reasons

hope this helps

Mac, as long as we recognise that the assessment of whether character is

in decline or not depends to a large extent on imponderables:

How many breeders out of the hundreds even here in the UK [let alone

the rest of Europe, the States, Middle East, India, W.Indies...] have

litters in which they run on all or most (rather than a dog and a bitch, if

that) of the pups to adulthood ?   Whether they also Train for hundsport

or not, whether they keep closely in touch with their buyers or not, how

do they really know how those pups turn out, and what their characters

mature to be ?

Oh, there's plenty of opinionated BS talked about what such-and-such dogs

turned out like, but really a good deal of that is hot air.  Sorry but we really

can't evaluate this from testing 7 week olds.

Duke - I will start with your second point first. You are right in saying “decline” is up to selection. The selection in the wild is about the survival of the fittest and differs from the selections made to continue the inherited traits within our breed. Chalk and cheese.

Your third point - you said “do we measure decline by the pups of a petdog breeder who is just producing pups from a dog coming from a famous dog, or do we measure decline by the pups from serious breeder that bred strong combination from same famous dog and a strong female”. You cannot measure decline of inherited character by comparing the pet breeders, as you call them, and serious breeders. Both have their failures and in reality the serious breeders probably have more litters than pet breeders and therefore more chance of producing more failures regardless of what male they use.

Your fourth and fifth points - How do you think a dog bred by a serious breeder would fare in the wild which is a completely different environment to that into which it was born. Both selection and character is different.

Returning to your first point - Can we then transpose Tyson’s name and similar dogs and replace it with any dog placed, for example, V50 or more from any major breed show?

Mackenzie

Mac; congrats!! Your post has been thought provoking. If you filter the broth, you can find sound logic and opinions from consceinous GSD lovers. The opinions of the people with the most merrit come from the people who have trained dogs for the LE and dog sport world. They have been involved for many years even decades with dog training. You can not know this breed without training your dogs. You can not better the GSD without training the breed partners. Now for the filter, ''Strength can be demonstrated by pushing people down or by pulling them up.''  Booker T Washington

now as long as we people choose to nurture and save the weak ones, be it for money or for sentimental reasons, people are not helping and creating weaker animals.
Sorry to have to disagree with you here. Nurturing weak pups from a litter is not the cause of decline of the Character of the gsd as a breed. A physically weak pup n a litter does not equal weak temperament, and character. Plus, if the pup never catches up, it will not likely become a va dog. Therefore the impact of any breeding by that dog would be minimal. If you want to use the analogy of gsd surviving in the wild, as I did earlier, then breeders must pay attention to instincts when selecting for breed ability. Without instincts, the gsd is devoid of proper character as a working breed.
Mac, the majority of posters ,I believe, are not Americans. We have Canada, Australia, Czech transplant, Dutch transplant, England, Germany, only a couple americans.