Working Potential? - Page 1

Does my GSD have working potential?

Sire: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/545666.html

Dam: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/561426.html

Can't wait to read the responses to this one!!!!

Do we Know? You have to know, you have seen the dog develop, show drives.. I do not live with this dog. I have seen better pedigree and bad working dogs, even no pedigree and great working dog..
Take the dog somewhere where somebody good can test it out and see... find out for yourself. Replies to this would be just a guess.

good working potential I say.

good luck!!!

cheers

All depends on your defenition of "working"  you won,t know till you try... But if your looking for a working dog I would try to stack the deck in my favor and start with a working pedigree.

Yes, replies would be just a guess by us - Your dog is GSD - you know your dog - you want him to work - he will work - will he be a gator - full grip - who knows..  What you want your dog to do, anyway?  Schutzhund, herding , Personal protection?   

You have seen your dog....  Tell us more than just giving  a pedigree - tell us about the dog.  Does the dog have drive?  Is he eager to please, how is his temperament.  I would like to know more myself......   

If it is schutzhund - have you taken him to a club?  How old is your dog/pup?

No way to answer this question with any kind of certainty based on such limited info given.  I'm not even sure what you mean by "working" - are you talking sport, like SchH, or real work like K9 patrol or SAR? 

In any case, since you've already got the dog you'll have to do the best you can with what you got.  The HANDLER is a large part of the equation.  Clearly you haven't exactly stacked the deck in your favor, so to speak, assuming the information is correct... showlines, and untitled and thus unproven parents.  But hopefully you've gotten lucky and got a little pistol on your hands.

Find a training group for your activity of interest and let the experienced guys evaluate the dog, then you'll really know what you've got on your hands.  Also, they can evaluate YOU as a a handler and give you suggestions on how to create a constructive environment for your dog to encourage the best possible outcome.

Yvette

The experienced in Schutzhund competition and obviously for good reason will not generally recommend show line GSD's as good working potential, but in Australia the majority of Police K9's are show line GSD's where a K9 trainer explained to us that for the work required of them depends on the actual dog. Show lines as he explained generally have a higher failure rate when testing for K9 work, but then again, more show lines are tested being in more plentiful supply than working line dogs. What he told us was a working line dog won't automatically qualify it to have K9 potential where many also fail the initial screening tests as do show lines.

Having problems with our show line GSD at 14 months with aggressive behaviour towards strangers, we were fortunate to meet a Police K9 trainer who helped us with obediance training techniques and tested our boy for hardness and drives required in K9 work and evaluated him as very good K9 potential. I noticed that our boy has some similar bloodlines to the pedigrees posted.

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/578380.html

Well, on paper what you shown us - all the dogs in the pedigree are showline dogs. I did not see one working dog of any note there that I could recognize. Doesn't mean there isn't, there are some famous showline dogs there, though.

They can work, too, the showlines. So, I'd say, yes, there could or might be "working potential" there, keywords COULD and MIGHT. One other question, when you ask about working potential, what work do you have in mind?

If you think Schutzhund, you can take the dog to a Schutzhund club near you and see what they say after they take him/her through a few paces. Hard to give a yes or no answer to such a vague question.