Sable puppy showing in AKC - Page 10

[Markobytes] 24.7.2016 - 16:07 

● "I don't think those involved in AKC showing appreciate a critique coming from the FCI perspective"
Of course not. They don't use the International Standard of the GSD, so they don't PRODUCE GSDs.
Not that it was a critique - we cannot discuss gait and character when looking at a stance photo, but an economical gait and a sensible character are two of the hallmarks of the true GSD.

 

● "The neck being pulled up is to give the dog a 'look of the Eagles"."
Yep - a ridiculous expression when thinking of dogs. I remember it from some long-gone "expert" - might have been Goldbecker, but I think it was before him - who wrote one of the earliest Yank books about GSDs and stated words along the lines of "a drunken von Stephanitz came into the ring, fired his pistol everywhere and ordered from the ring every one that flinched. Once the best dogs had gone he began judging what was left". That passage has probably been edited out of the more recent (say the last 20-30 years) editions of that book. How can gun-shy dogs be "the best dogs" in a breed whose duties include military & police work?

● "The FCI standard states "Upper and lower leg are of approximately the same length and form an angle of approximately 120 degrees" whereas the AKC standard states "with both upper and lower thigh well muscled, forming as nearly as possible a right angle"."
The link to the original GSDCAmerica Illustrated Standard is
http://www.gsdca.org/Noframes/standard/IllStan1.htm
but you'll need to be a MIGHTY fast reader before it is plucked from your vision and replaced with what is NOT according to FCI#166. Nevertheless, although the drawings showed a rather "doughy-bodied" dog,

http://www.gsdca.org/Noframes/standard/Illo22.htm
contains the best example I've seen of the CORRECT leg-angulations at both ends, with all 3 of the hind-leg positions included.

90° IS correct for two of the positions - but 120° is the requirement for the rear-most leg in the "Show Stance".

● "I really appreciate Mr Pauling take the utility of a dog herding sheep in consideration"
We HAVE to:
Deutsche = German
Schäfer = Shepherd
Hund = Dog

Its name in either language shows that it has not been developed as principally a detection dog, a guide dog, a protection dog, a search&rescue dog, a show dog, a sport dog.
Those interested in HERDING GSDs will enjoy the articles in this New York site:
http://www.german-shepherdherding.com/

Und ich bin Les.
 

● "The promise I wrote of was the GSDCA's responsibility as a member of the WUSV to breed to a uniform standard."
Hmmmm - and in which millennium did they have to fulfil that promise? They might be currently breeding to a "uniform" standard, but it is NOT the International Standard of the GSD.
 

● "Les, you keep bringing up the WDA,"
Nah - I haven't vomited since just before the shuttle (mini-bus) delivered me to the local hospital after my February hand operation. And it wasn't my lunch I brought up and had to swallow (because the shuttle hadn't quite finished swaying along the motorway) - it was the remnants of the night before's supper. No food, no coffee allowed on the day of a surgery, damnit.
Wodderyameen, that's not what you meant?
Yes, I enjoy word-twisting (bringing up = vomiting). Back in about 1978 when I had my class of 7 & 8 year olds write the school's song, I persuaded them to include "look down on Whitby too". The kids thought it was because we were near the top of the hill that Whitby was at the bottom of, but the parents no doubt enjoyed the interpretation that we "looked down our noses at" the suburb, which was a rather snobbish one.

● "I can assure you that there are only three people on the North American continent that wish to see the WDA in control of anything. The whole organization was brought down while trying to award one of the board members with the top kennel group in perpetuity."

That is such a stupid idea that I can only hope that there has been some misinterpretation along the way. I recently e-mailed their secretary re their fight with the GSDCAmerica, but otherwise the only member I know was the one elected to be my "King Les"s queen back about 14 years ago. A fellow cannot control what voters will do! As Trump & Clinton will discover later this year.
 

● "Sunsilver's posting the image of the dog was both encouraging and a proper example of the venue that this thread was intended."
I WISH someone would tell me how to get a photo from my computer into a pdb post. If there is a photo in this post it will be because it is from an on-line web-site, not just my computer.

 

[Sunsilver] 25.7.2016 - 11:07

● "Les, ... I also wanted to show LadyBoss that sables COULD win in the AKC ring, unlike the SV ring, where they are often shunted to the back of the class, ever since one of the SV presidents decided sable wasn't a good colour for a GSD."
Having started in GSDs when the the top ones in NZ were sables; and having in 1974 had my wife refuse to let me take our champion bitch (her parents were the first 2 gold medallists in NZ) into the ring under Maxwell Riddle (USA); and in 1976 or '77 borrowed several sables in order to ask an Australian all-breeds "judge" what he had against sables, I would HOPE that even AKC judges have enough awareness to know that coat pattern is irrelevant PROVIDED the GSD has enough black in the required places. But regardless of the virtues of the bitch you posted, in THAT stance she is not representing a GSD.

Your 2008 unanswered pdb question is answered at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verein_f%C3%BCr_Deutsche_Sch%C3%A4ferhunde
although I don't know whether in that question and this thread you refer to Hermann Martin (1982-94), Peter Meßler (1994-2002), or Wolfgang Henke (2002- ??). The late Dr Malcolm Willis stated that in his opinion the best thing the Martin brothers did for the breed was to die. I'm happy to agree - especially re Hermann's influence on "type".

● "As American show lines g o, I think she's a very pretty girl."

But "American show lines" are NOT presented as GSDs - not since dogs such as Hessian's Baldur. I've used only one NAmerican pooch - a half-German son of  Ch. & GV. Von Nassau's Galaxie who happened to be in Scotland when we needed a stud at the start of 1977 to mate our purchase to before flying her to us, and our bitch and our kennel already had all the Rossfort Premonition, Asoka Cherusker, Ludwig of Charavigne (all 3 closely related to Avon Prince of Alunvale) we could handle. We weren't entirely unhappy with results, but the bitch we had rights to a litter from had HD (although getting BS.Cl.1), and a nice dog was returned by his buyer, taken on by a breeder who reckoned she could fix his cowardly character, but within a year he was p.t.s. by that breeder. On the good side, the bitch that went to a pair of all-breeds judges founded my country's longest GSD line of in-kennel mother-daughter show champions.
 

● "so unbalanced that it can no longer trot properly, and the front leg is still in the air while the opposite hind leg is on the ground. The trot is, and always will be a 2-beat gait, so please don't try to tell me this is correct movement."

So I won't. I don't use that term - I use "diagonal gait". And THAT leaves room for what I deem the correct "timing" - the forward pastern must lift slightly BEFORE the opposite rear foot moves, so that (as in "your" illustration) there is space for the hind foot on the left hind leg to drive _UNDER the left fore-foot - whereas almost all dogs "crab", placing the hind foot BESIDE the forefoot, to avoid interference between the two feet under the middle of the body.

However, I will point out that in "your" class of 4 cloned Coyote Dogs plus Quasimodo's witherless sister, NONE of them is shown with 2 feet on the ground at the same time, which I suspect is part of the requirement of a "2-beat gait" - but I can't be bothered digging out McDowell Lyon's "The Dog In Action" to check whether I've remembered that term correctly.

Les, please check your PM's. I sent you a link to the Tutorial forum, which shows you how to do just about everything you could want to do on this board. You can find it by clicking on 'Forum List' on the left side of your screen.

And yes, I acknowledge that the American dogs don't always show a correct gait either. But I already said in my post I wasn't crazy about their conformation either.

I grew up in the 60s, and my first three German sheperds had a build that was similar to dogs from that era. None of them had papers, though. Then, in the new millenium, when I decided to get my first registered dog, I couldn't believe what had happened to the conformation of my favourite breed! The American dogs had added a couple of extra inches to their backs, and their hocks were down on the ground. The German dogs had grown a hump in the middle of their backs, which was higher than their withers.

Uncertain of what to do, I finally compromised by buying a pup that was a cross between the best of the two lines, with conformation that avoided the worst excesses of both lines. She had moderate angulation, and a topline that included withers, a straight back with no roach and a croup that was neither too steep or too short. Unfortunately, she also had poor pigment and her saddle faded to nearly nothing by the time she was two. X-rays showed a mildly dysplastic left hip, so I had her spayed. Although she wasn't quite what I was hoping for, I've done tracking, obedience and beginner agility with her. She passed a temperament test that included gunfire and a stranger waving a stick around and shouting. She also passed her BH, and is trained as my hearing ear service dog. If we had started schutzhund earlier, she probably could have gotten at least an IPO1, but she's a bit long in the tooth now for that, having turned 9 in January.

Took me a few minutes to figure out what you were referring to when you talked about my class of 4 cloned coyote dogs plus Quasimodo's witherless sister, but I finally got it...lol! The artist is Linda Shaw, who recently published a book, The Illustrated Standard of the GSD:http://www.shawlein.com/2016/free-copy-of-illustrated-standard/ 

Unfortunately, it has already sold out, after only 8 months, but you can see it for free at the above link.

[Sunsilver] 27.7.2016 - 23:07

 

● "Les, please check your PM's. I sent you a link to the Tutorial forum, which shows you how to do just about everything you could want to do on this board."

Don't bet on it!!

I had been there some weeks ago, and what I had tried didn't work.
In my previous (27 July 2016 - 15:07 not-NZTime) post I had attempted to "intuitively" use part of the editor. The result was a tiny "frame" in my post but no IMAGE in the Saved post, so I Edited the post to remove that "frame".
Although we both know the words that WYSIWYG stands for, we have different interpretations of what WYSIWYG actually means.

What I se in this CKEditor is NOT what I see after saving my message,
 

I had assumed that the new PM message was from a polite moderator who had asked for assistance, and has yet to respond to my request sent after, about a third-way-through composing my answer, the damned message "Sent" itself. So as I was busy I ignored the new figure until your request today. Fact is that Oli needs to find a decent user-friendly Text Editor, just as he needs to find a better Picture Galleries Editor. But the problems in his pedigree pages are presumably giving him all the hassles he can handle.
 

While checking through my ordinary e-mails, I found that Swarnendu had linked me to your 2008
http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/community.read?post=311766-playing-with-uploading-photos#311769

I will try it when I get time, but am NOT optimistic - I point out that on my screen your "Shameless Beggar" does NOT appear in your post - only an invisible square with those two words in it as alternative text.

 

● "I grew up in the 60s"

Just a kid, huh? 1960 was my first year of standing solely responsible for a class of children (but in 1953 I had been coached, at the age of 12 or 13, to research and present a lesson about bees to the the upper half of our tiny - sometimes 1 teacher, sometimes 2 teachers - school). To make it worse, my first (aka Probationary Teacher) class was 2 years younger than the age-range I had focussed on at teachers' college. But I survived, and so did the pupils.
 

● "and my first three German sheperds"

Stay in after school and write 500 times "GSD = German Shepherd Dog, because this is a HERDing breed and because breed names require a capital letter for each word except when the word is an internal connective such as 'at', 'aus', 'de', 'der', 'from', 'of', 'vom', 'von', 'zur' ." (Damn - I should have been able to think of more connectives than that 9 - I must be getting old.... Or didn't want to have to stay and supervise you instead of going home and enjoying Nescafé ....)
What's that - you deserve clemency because of sending me the PM? Oh okay - 250 copies will be enough.
 

● "Then, in the new millenium, when I decided to get my first registered dog, I couldn't believe what had happened to the conformation of my favourite breed! The American dogs had added a couple of extra inches to their backs, and their hocks were down on the ground."

The NAmerican Ski-Slope Dogs - also certain British dogs regarded as long enough to compete in 2 rings at once - usually also added an inch or three of shin-length. Which instantly reduced the "ankle" leverage/control available to the muscles/ligaments rooted on the pelvis.
 

● "The German dogs had grown a hump in the middle of their backs, which was higher than their withers."
The hump was earlier than that - in the 70s there was one imported stud that was known as "The Sydney Harbour Bridge".
 

● "a topline that included withers"
Withers have been a problem for at least the last 45 years. I disbelieve critiques that include the phrase "high withers" - they will be level withers compared to what was available during my "apprenticeship".

 

● "a straight back with no roach"
I advise you to NOT regard Linda Shaw as a god. As an artist she is VERY good, but for vocabulary she refuses to accept that the term "roach" derives from the top-line of the carp-fish known as the roach:
http://www.all-fish-seafood-recipes.com/index.cfm/fish/Carp/
http://www.flyfishing.co.uk/fly-fishing-other-species/71294-river-roach-2.html
so she calls EVERY convex curve "roached" (which would make WELL-FILLED CROUPS roached...).
To truly be ROACHED, the top-line must R^ISE before it curves down. Banana backs are not roached UNLESS their 5-bone BACK rises from the withers to the join between the back & the 7-lumbar-bones LOIN - but often top-lines that do that are hinge-backs rather than banana backs or roached-backs.
I cannot think of any possible way for the loin to bridge the distance between the almost-level BACK and the 22½° CROUP "without visible interruption" (as per the  The upper line paragraph of FCI#166 for many decades) without it gently curving. If the loin is STRAIGHT, then it either aligns with the almost level back or it aligns with the 22½° croup or it has a sharp angle at one or both ends.

 

● "Unfortunately, she also had poor pigment and her saddle faded to nearly nothing by the time she was two."
Unattractive to us, but unimportant for sheep work PROVIDED she retained enough darkness to display the "predator mask". Unfortunately that "black loss" was (is?) widely loved in the USA, thanks to paled-out carriers of self-white that was inherited by those descendants of
http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=17164-odin-vom-busecker-schlo
who took turns starring as Rin Tin Tin in the tv series (after the normally-pigmented original unregisterable Rin Tin Tin and his normally-pigmented unregisterable son had to be retired). Daphne Hereford's Rin Tin Tin web-site seems to have vanished.

● "She ... is trained as my hearing ear service dog. ... having turned 9 in January."

My ears haven't reached that stage yet, although many years ago I had my telephone ear "vacuumed" out because I was still doing most of my research on the telephone.
 

● "Quasimodo's witherless sister, but I finally got it...lol! The artist is Linda Shaw"
Yep - you gave her credit in the previous post. I've added her on-line book's address to my Bookmarks, thanks - but as an article, not as a Standard. A quick skim-through shows that she does NOT print the parts of Standard FCI#166 she refers to. In addition, I WISH she would leave the portrait of her first champion on her study wall instead of using it as her non-verbal signature or trademark.

 

The reason the photo doesn't show up in my post is either I moved the photo, or the changes Oli has made to the website since then caused it to disappear. The instructions for posting a photo still should work, though.

Here's the "Shameless Beggar" photo. The flash on the camera wasn't working very well, so the dog appears very washed out. She's my avatar dog, a reverse masked female my room-mate found wandering the streets of Scarborough one day. She had the truest GSD temperament of any dog I've owned so far. My late husband spoiled her rotten, though he knew better than to give her chocolate... The ski-slope era had started, so a Canadian showline breeder told me she couldn't possibly be purebred, because her bum was almost as high as her head, but a German breeder said she looked just like the police dogs he'd worked with in Germany after the war.

 

As for Daphne Herford, after a prolonged legal battle, she lost the right to the Rin Tin Tin name. The court proved that the lines she has are not directly descended from the original Rin Tin Tin. She was using the name to market her puppies for $3,000 a pop. They had faded pigment, ancestors had no titles, except for maybe the odd working title, and their conformation was nothing to write home about.

Small wonder Chuck EIsenman, owner and breeder of the Littlest Hobo dogs refused to reveal their pedigrees to prevent unscrupulous breeders from profiting off the Hobo name... 

Bill Koehler has had far more influence on guard/police/protection training in the US, than Konrad Most....Helmut Raiser has been most influential in past 25 years.

[Sunsilver] 28.7.2016 - 12:07

● "The reason the photo doesn't show up in my post is either I moved the photo, or the changes Oli has made to the website since then caused it to disappear. The instructions for posting a photo still should work, though."
I hope, I hope - when I get time to concentrate on translating the geekish (that the "Help" writer used) into fair dinkum Kiwi English as per the writings of Charles Dickens plus the King James Authorised Bible.
 

● "Here's the "Shameless Beggar" photo."
GSDs are not Labradors or GRs, but it's amazing what some of them will do in the presence of food! Are you sure it was your husband who scoffed the NOT chocolate-coated biscuit (it could be a Malt biscuit) that's missing from that packet?
 

● "a reverse masked female"
Why do you term her "reverse masked"? Ignoring Google insisting on including weird things such as GAS masks, her facial markings fit within the range in
https://www.google.co.nz/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1600&bih=735&q=gsd+mask&gws_rd=cr&ei=NoWcV4rXKcuk0ATlo4L4BA#tbm=isch&q=gsd+mask&nfpr=1

● "As for Daphne ... The court proved that the lines she has are not directly descended from the original Rin Tin Tin."
Good. In her website she had sneaked around it by using a wording such as "Odin was related to Rin Tin Tin" - but she was unable to state the actual lines of descent they had in common. She also insisted hat Odin had beaten Pfeffer for the SV Sieger title. Grrrrrr!

● "They had faded pigment"
Some had NO coat pigment - the litters included self-whites. Of course, a self-white should show up well to drivers at night....

● "ancestors had no titles, except for maybe the odd working title"
Please don't use that term.
Titles go IN FRONT OF the holder's name - such as Baron, Champion, Doctor, Lord, President, Queen, Sieger. And if Daphne Hereford was doing what she CLAIMED to be doing - providing assistance dogs, a conformation title would be of no benefit - indeed, in the USA it is very likely to be a hindrance!
Working titles would be such as Agility Ch., Int.Ch.(T), Obed.Ch., WT.Ch., WUSV.Sgr.
But Dogsport people incorrectly call QUALIFICATIONS (such as AD, BH, FH, HGH, IPO) "titles".
It would be nice if people would learn correct usage, instead of grandstanding and in the process changing the meanings of words. I HATE that the Oxford Dictionary has had to give in to the world's ignorant multitudes and define "literally" as being identical to "figuratively", instead of the opposite that it was for generations.


[Gustav] on 28 July 2016 - 13:07

● "Bill Koehler has had far more influence on guard/police/protection training in the US, than Konrad Most....Helmut Raiser has been most influential in past 25 years."
Both statements are quite possibly correct. But it doesn't take away from Most being (except to the many people who believe that the world wasn't created until they themselves got born...) regarded as the "FATHER" of serious training in NAmerica. I haven't read Most's book, but I own Koehler's book - his 2nd, I think. People who THOUGHT they were applying the Koehler method in the Cambridge Obedience Club were responsible for me leaving the obed.club-world. I can easily agree with Koehler's reasoning, but the severity, the sternness (repeating a command was forbidden, as was all other use of the voice) with which his ACTIONS were applied by the "leaders" of that club were inappropriate for innocent beginner pups.

And where did Koehler get his training from?

 

NZKC obedience isn't the same as SchH and ZVV, but to succeed in any training field requires awareness and competent diligence. Of the 20 top-ranked pooches in NZ Obedience Tests at present, #1 is a Jack Russell Terrier, #2 is a Golden Retriever, most of the rest are Border Collies (or their NZ derivative the NZ Huntaway) plus a few Retrievers. But there are 4 GSDs - #10, #12, #14, #16 - of which 3 train privately 80 km/77 minutes north of me in a private class run by the woman who knows I want a pup from 

http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=2341555  or her sister during 2017, after their hip & elbow scores are reported back.

Ohh, NOT ANOTHER PHILIPP FAN.

Hund, what's a Philipp fan?

Les is Philipp SUPERFAN, if Javir isn't watching!!

LadyBoss: the link Les posted is to a litter sired by a dog called Philipp who has been used A LOT as a sire for UK litters, the past couple of years the UK showrings have been full of them. I am joking with Les a bit, but there is always the point about ONE popular dog getting over-used, with results that are not ideal for the breed as a whole ("bottlenecks"). Also, a personal thing, I only like about 1 in 10 of the heads he throws, which are quite distinctive.