Show and Working Lines, 2 separate breeds - Page 14

beetree, it's all rather sad and tacky really and I'm afraid I've contributed by continuing to post to them... hey ho!

 Done then! Have a nice weekend, missbeeb!

thanks for the nice discussion

cheers

I am trying to understand why working lines generally appear to be different colours, usually very dark, sable, all black where the show lines are what myself  "average Joe" considers is the traditional tan and black colour that you would expect a GSD to be. Why are working lines not tan and black, or perhaps some may be, I am interested to know???.

I can't see how colour could reflect a dog's ability to work as such and was hoping that some knowledgable people here could enlighten me as to why???

Over the years I have seen many police and security dogs here in Australia, certainly not all, but generally they are black and tan more the showline look???

 I'm taking a printout of this thread and studying it point by point. WOW !!! what a load of info here some good some bad both...

Rex, There are genetic reasons why the color scheme reflects the working ability, and the English and Australians are probably the only places today where you see the traditional black and tan/red dogs are predominant police dogs in past 15 years. I won't extrapolate on this but the police/military GS you see predominantly today in the rest of the world, are all the other colors but the black and tan/red. There are exceptions but this is the state of things today, you can put all the spin or excuses for this occurrence, but the facts are what they are!

Gustav, I thought genetics maybe the case. Dog sports, Shutzhund is very much in it's infancy in Australia and most working of GSD's is security and police. There are breeders of show line GSD's that posess the required drives for what security and police require which generally is tracking down offenders, chasing and attacking on command. The ultimate speed of the dog and pure agility in these roles needs only to be better than a human, and it appears on a large scale that the GSD generally selecting large males for training in these roles act as a deterrent factor for officers as to what the dog "may" be capable of as it barks furiously at the end of a policeman's leash. "Stop, or I will let the dog go" is often heard in first line defence of apprehending offenders on foot. Rarely do you hear of a police GSD in Australia causing more harm than a couple of tooth punctures on an offenders leg as they tried to scale a fence to avoid arrest.

Many security guards patrol shopping complex at night with a GSD all tan/red and black that bark on command, but what else these dogs can do in a working sense, I guess not too many people are brave enough to push boundaries with the dog to find out lol!!!.

S