Grafental lines - Page 1

What do you knowledgeable people know about the OLD DDR Grafental line? Some say they are a showline and that they were always a showline, but it seems suspect to me that in that society there was much of a "showline crowd" as we know it. Am I wrong? The only personal knowledge I have of them is with dogs from well after the reunification of Germany. Just curious.

There really was not such a division between show and working lines in the DDR such as we have seen in West Germany for the last maybe twenty years. There were top breeders who showed their dogs, and of course they were in prominence, and there were working dog handlers who only trialed their dogs, but they were in the minority, and they drew pretty much from the same bloodlines that the "show" breeders did. In short, the breed had not "split" yet, as it has long ago in BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland or the former "West" Germany). The "split" into two distinct groups happens when breeders specialize into one area or the other and do not cross over into each others' gene pools, or only rarely. Some (a few) working dog breeders and trainers will breed into show lines, but it is almost unheard of that a breeder who competes in shows will breed into a working line. Both groups have become overly specialized, in a sense, and there seems to be no coming together, again. But it was not this way in the DDR.. At least, not yet. At the end, before the repatriation of the DDR to the BRD, the SV show lines started to come in through Czechoslovakia, and the show breeders were eager to get their hands on them, because the grass is always greener, on the other side, and these people had of course heard stories of the successes of the SV breeders. But I don't think that this was a good thing. In fact, I think that it spelled the beginning of the end for the true DDR dog (which is now almost completely gone, as a pure and distinct lineage). It's really a shame, I think, especially because these mixed dogs were never accepted by the "high line" SV breeders and were thus doomed to fall away into oblivion. A few of the former DDR lines are still found now in the pedigrees of working dog families, or in the kennels or breeders in rural areas of the former DDR.

If you are forced to use the SV system, you are forced pretty much to go with the mainstream, which is show. Everything else gets crowded out.

And, I hate to say it, but I think it is all really just a matter of money. German Shepherd Dog breeding today is ultimately market-driven or catering to the consumer.

Oh! It's you, OldNewGuyMC! I have quite a bit of experience with the old DDR lines. I owned several good dogs, and at least one that I know of was smuggled out of the DDR. That was my second DDR dog. The first was imported by Mark Reed. There were others, and I had some really great dogs over the years. It was a fun time. Sad that it's basically all gone now. I really think that the average DDR breeder did not know what they had. Now, enough time has gone by that the old-timers are retiring or passed over, and out of the dogs anyway. The SV does not make it very easy to continue with anything, really. There are also logistical problems, and people have limited resources, there is only a small market for the old type DDR dog, and it is saturated with only a few bloodlines, no place to go. I still have some of my old bloodlines in frozen semen. I actually have a few breedings from a dog which is linebred 3-2 on Don vom Rolandsteich and goes back pretty close on Held and Grand vom Ritterberg. A few people can bring these dogs back and are planning to, but not with AKC, SV, etc., at least not on my part. I am not interested in making money with the dogs. These registries never helped them, only resulted in mixed pedigrees which were of little long-term interest to anyone and especially the mainstream breeders who set the trends in breeds. My opinion is that the DDR DSH can only be preserved as a pure and distinct breed.

You're a wealth of information, DDR! Thank you for the background-very interesting. It's hard for me to imagine actual "shows" going on in that closed society of the past, but I guess there are no political boundaries when it comes to the love for GSD's. Do you have any background on the Grafental group specifically? MC

Goes back to the mantra: SDPB Show Dogs Pay Bills It IS kind of a shame that the DDR lines are disappearing, but to me, its more a human-state cultural/historical loss than a loss to the breed, as I never cared for many of the first DDR dogs to cross to the West: Overloaded in defence & aggression, "under-gifted" in prey, (to be tactful)"odd" over-sharp responses to traditional methods/stimulus used in SchH sport training on this side of the iron curtain, slightly slanted eyes, threatening expressions... all characteristics useful in dogs bred and used to intimidate human beings. Over the course of 40 yrs. East Germany had "adjusted" the types and judging of exersizes (sp?)in their Bundessiegerprufung and re-vamped the breed-worthiness (is that a word? ;)qualification/evaulation processes to reflect a different direction for their breeding program than the Western version. I will concede that the "official" SV/WUSV "direction," as dictated by the selection of V-A dogs, with a blind eye to pathetic lack of working ability at the BSZS (till Messler initiated change in '97) was pretty disappointing a lot of that time. Under the Martin Mafia for way too long, the breed was headed (IMO) straight for the toilet for about twenty years as far as the breed's working ability was concerned. Happily that is changing for the better, however slowly. It is now a distant-but-concieveable possibility that the Top 10 Bundessieger participants and the V-A recipients each year may finally contain a few of the same dogs, as once was the case. This, I believe, was what Max intended, and how it should be. Doubtless the re-introduction of "old" bloodlines that were preserved/utilized in E. Germany during the seperation of state, and either fell from popularity or were lost altogether when the wall went up, closing off access to most of an entire country IN ONE DAY, has helped bring back some aspects of our dogs' working ability... not to mention infusing our training programs with some "fresh blood" (if not highly technical thinking. :-O Still, I remember how poor the E. German shepherd breeders were when the wall came down, and how far they would go to sell their dogs to Westerners dirt cheap, an unwitting blueprint for breeders in rest of the Eastern Bloc countries as they, too, opened for trade with the rest of the world. A bottle of good Western brandy could and DID produce anything a buyer fancied in the way of papers: pedigrees, titles, ratings, hip certifications, breed surveys, all bearing the "official stamps of the registering" organizations of the economically depressed countries hungry for Western dollars, marks, yen, pesos... whatever, anything but the unstable currency of the seller's own country. Fakes, forgeries, false documents (many "blessed" by the "official" registries in their country of origin) were, and still are to some extent, the norm, rather than the exception. No one but the breeders themselves, and often not even they KNEW the true pedigrees/training levels/hip statuses of the dogs exported to the West by the dozens. The SV put a moratorium on foreign registrations of Eastern Bloc dog-exports for a time, their documents so blatantly fraudulent. Business-as-usual" took full advantage of us spoiled, rich Westerners. Dogs arrived in shockingly poor health, skinny, malnourished, and LOADED with parasites. Antienthelmics (sp?) are EXPENSIVE, even here, and were difficult-to-impossible to get outside the military environment in those days. WHAT sanitation? Fido & family were lucky to get scraps. Many never fully recover(ed) despsite the buyers' and their veterinarians' best efforts. But I digress... (really!) Perhaps the pure DDR dog has been committed to history along with the state that created it. IMO, the dogs themselves are a lot better off now. Their contributions to the dogs in future will never REALLY be "lost." Shelley

Sounds just like here in America. I've heard some horror stories about what people have ended up with by contacting importers/exporters on their own and not going thru a reputable Schutzhund person here in the UsA ,to get a dog from working lines. I always tell people keep your money here at home and u can see and find that person or kennel or breeder either by a airline ticket or a call to someone that deals in finding u a dog. Money is the root of all evil.

Shelly, Here's what I think: I think you've got quite an imagination, but unfortuneately NOT the skills go far in creative writing. I had a hard time even following this rant, and I have not had time to pick it apart quite yet, but just what I got so far has turned my stomach. I don't think you know nearly as much as you pretend to on the subject. For one thing, this "wall" that everyone keeps talking about was only through the middle of Berlin.. Not all around East Germany (Do you know your history, and do you remember what the Berlin airlift was about?). What there was, i.e. guard towers, mime fields, stranded wire, and so on, was up for a very long time before the Berlin Wall was built, and even that took more than one night, obviously (think about this a minute, OK?) The fact of the matter is that the dogs of the DDR are (or were) FAR more like the original dogs found all throughout Germany before the war and throughout the mid-70's (up until as late as 1980). Herman and Walter Martin ruined the breed by commercializing it and narrowing the gene-pool, so far as I am concerned. There were very many good bloodlines which did not go to Arminius and Wienerau when I first joined the SV.. I believe this was in 1974. I remember very well the dogs back then and they did not look anything like the cookie-cutter show dogs that now dominate the breed. For one thing, only about 25 percent of the dogs were black and tan, such as we see now maybe 80% or better of. We saw lots of bi-colors, blacks, and sables as well. I've heard so much crap about DDR dogs from people who never even owned one, including theories that they were cross-bred with Rottweilers, that they really did not have such good hips (Everyone knows, Communists lie!), that they were bred to be menacing to further the efforts of the Communists and Stazi to oppress the people, and so forth. It's all crap! I will tell you that which I do know. I followed one bad lead after another in the West German lines, both working and show, over a period of approximately fifteen years, until I actually was ready to give up, forever. I was tired of all the bad hips, soft ears, retained testes, and worthless temperaments. But then, I bought my first DDR dog, a son of Don vom Rolandsteich. (more to follow..)

I saw an ad by Mark Reed in Schutzhund USA magazine, in which he showed this dog, Don vom Rolandsteich, and it said that out of about 200 offspring, 100% had 'a' hips. I really could not quite believe it, but I had to try. Don was not breeding at the time, but Mark offered to get a good Don son for me, as he had done for a man not far from me in S. California, Don Simon. Well, Mark got me a super dog.. One of the best dogs I've ever owned, in fact. In his first breeding, to a bitch with a known background of HD in the family, I kept three bitches, and ALL passed OFA. This was literally the first time EVER that I had had such luck. Many times before I had kept several pups from breedings, and maybe one out of four or five would make OFA, on average. Now, suddenly, I had three out of three! So, I bought another DDR stud dog, and I had similar results from him. I eventually changed out all my stock to DDR, and I averaged about 85% or better OFA offspring from all. Curiously, this is the same percentage that the DDR SDG quoted as a breed average. Hmmmmm... I also had extremely low percentages of retained testes, long coats, ear faults, and temperament problems. These were all six areas in total that the DDR breeders were encouraged and helped to control. I actually had one dog that produced ZERO cryptorchids, something I had never seen before. This is a recessive controlled gene, and most dogs and bitches have the recessive. Guess what? When I checked this dogs record in the DDR, he had a breed recommendation because he produced NO cryptorchids!!!! Well, if Commies lie, they were being pretty honest about their dogs. But you see.. They never intended for them to be exported or sold. The government encouraged and assisted breeders to produce and train suitable dogs as a source for their military and police. One of my dogs was even smuggled out of the country. He was never "permitted" to go, and apparently the owner told the breed warden that the dog had been poisoned.