Interesting Website! - Page 1

How about this, folks? 'Old fashioned', flat-backed GSD's that can actually WORK!!!

Several things impressed me about this website. The dogs are all descended from German imports. A VERY high percentage of each litter tests as suitable for police work, AND they have very few problems with soundness of the hips and spine!

Edit: I finally got the link fixed so it does NOT go to their wolfdog page. (I am not at all interested in their wolfdogs!) 

 www.olderhill.co.za


Here's the reall proof of the pudding!

At the Sieger Show in 1993, I saw only a couple of dogs with sloped backs - the rest were these flat-backed working shepherds. What is the difference between dogs that are the product of years of selection for working ability and health and those that are the result of years of selection for shows? Show people deny any difference, but common sense and facts suggest otherwise.

Dogs can be produced after many years whose puppies are nearly 100% suitable for field-work - that is, out of a 1itter of 10 puppies all 10 will be suitable. The suitability of the well bred show dogs that these programmes started off with ranged from 9% to 35% - one to four suitable puppies in a litter of 10.

For the past two years, the SA Police have been able only to train successfully 5,5% of the 1 800 shepherds donated to them due to defective health or temperaments (8). That is fewer than six dogs out of 100 less than one puppy in a litter of 10 suit able for field-work. Sounds shocking, but probably fairly accurately reflects the decline noted in all the shepherd books I've read. The police commander says that 15 years ago the success rate was much higher (8) and this corresponds with what many working people have told me - that the dogs 10-15 years ago were much stronger in body, temperament and health than today's "modem" show shepherd. (After the fraternity's June 9th accusation that British dogs have bad temperaments, it's amusing to note that this decline corresponds with the increase in the number of German imports.) There is, therefore, a huge difference in the percentage of puppies suitable for field-work in a "working" or "show" litter.

 

I'm sorry! I copied the link to the wolfdog page by mistake instead of the GSD page!

Here's the correct link: www.olderhill.co.za/wolfdogs_1.htm

EDIT: it will not let me link to the homepage for some reason. Click the above link then select 'HOME' to see the page I've been trying to link to!

As for the back structure, here's what the website says::

Olderhill german shepherds have a natural 'square' shape. They are flat-backed and their hind legs straight, (unlike the show-ring german shepherd's sloped back and bent hind legs). Their spines are flexible like a cat’s, and so can easily take the pressure of high jumps and hard landings. People with show-ring GSDs call these flat, flexible backs 'soft' and judge them to be a fault. They want their dogs to have sloped, rigid backs and don't realize that this causes their dogs' spines to jar when they land after jumping. They just know that their dogs get damaged by jumping and so avoid doing it as much as possible. The Olderhill german shepherds don’t suffer from hip problems because they absorb their food well. Their hind quarters are wide and powerful, and don’t degenerate after a few years because of pinched nerves in the spine. We believe this to be the german shepherd dog's worst medical problem and in our experience 90% of all GSDs are euthanased because of this. We are not the only people to think so. Herr Raiser, the present breed warden of the German Shepherd Dog Federation in Germany, (the S.V - Schäferhund Verein), also estimates that 90% of today's GSDs are handicapped because of pinched nerves in the spine and that hips play a minor role. He is so gloomy about the modern german shepherd's health that he suggests putting belgian shepherd (malinois) blood into the german shepherd dog breed to make it healthier! Some of Germany's police agree with him and have started re-trenching their german shepherds and replacing them with malinois. If they knew that the original, healthy, flat-backed german shepherd dogs still exist in the Olderhills, then they would probably be glad to use them because they are much bigger and braver than most belgian shepherds.