And in the beginning, there was - Page 1

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/8309.html

 WOW, those old pedigrees are really something.......

Wow, he's so inbred.  1-1 on "No information".

Seriously, what do you know about him?  Is he turn of the 20th century?

Horand's grandsire!  Wow!  Didn't know Horand's dam's sire was white.  And more modern looking than Horand himself.

Greif must have been a working dog that didn't actually pass through the Captain's hands, as I was under the impression that Horand was the dog he first bought and renamed.

Thank you, Mirasmom, for this walk back in history.

Technically you should have said  BEFORE the beginning, there was Greif.  He is sort of the Titan of the ancient Greek Gods.  He who came BEFORE Zeus. 

The white Greif was the Titan of gsds -- before the first.   Born around 1890.

Our Zeus was the sable Horand, born in 1895, the first official GSD.  Greif was Horand's grandsire as has already been said.

Great article about Horand -- his temperament really has come forward in many gsds

http://www.gsdca.org/GSDReviewed/hdogs/HorandGrafrath.html

Captain Max loved this dog and bought him for a fortune -- 200 DM in 1899.

His original name was Hektor Linksrhein, by the way.  See Wikl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horand_von_Grafrath

With all due respect to Captain Max, Hector (or Hektor) was a great name -- Hector of Troy was the single greatest protector of hearth and home and country in all of literature (and perhaps history).  (Read your Iliad, or at least see the movie, Troy.)

My own sable Datscha Frauengarten's call name is Hektor for the record.

An interesting exercise: how many generations removed are your dogs from Horand (or Greif -- the white Titan)?

See this

http://www.aniwa.com/document/en/general/magazine/german-shepherd-special/evolution-of-the-german-shepherd-in-30-generations/index.htm

I guess that ends the mystery as to where the White's comes from  and how the captain felt about them.

Good point.

Our breed came out of whites and grays (sables) and a dog named Pollux who, they said, belonged in the zoo (he was palpably a wolf.)  Pollux was Horand's OTHER grandfather.

By 1903, the dogs looked more like Belgians than did Horand -- so square dogs with full forefaces were also being introduced.

Nonetheless, von Stephanitz appeared to prefer Horand's type -- sliighly longer than tall and gray (sable) with a stop. He didn't bring along whites on purpose, as I understand it.  To his credit, he publicly emphasized Horand's temperament which is remarkably constant for 115 years.

"Hektor’s and Luch's maternal grandfather was a white-coated German herding dog named Greif von Sparwasser, whelped in Friedrich Sparwasser's Frankfort kennel in 1879. George Horowitz, renowned English Judge, German Shepherd (Alsatian) columnist, author and historian documents the background of Hektor Linksrhein (a.k.a. Horand von Grafrath) in his 1923 book, “The Alsatian Wolf-Dog.” In his book Horowitz documents that the white-coated herding dog named Greif von Sparwasser, born in 1879, was presented at the 1882 and 1887 Hanover Dog Shows."

Nonetheless, the picture in the pdb is a 1906 photo of one of Greif Sparwasser's progeny (a few generations removed) as there is no pic of Greif himself. I suppose this was meant to give us a best guess.

Note that Horand's grandsire Greif was sixteen years his senior! Average breeding age of sire and grandsire was eight (8) years old. If we stuck to an old-sire rule, we'd probably increase the longevity of the breed in a few generations.

.

.