workingline best new stud - Page 55

 Steve, Daryl and Duke

You are all marvelous irregardless of disagreement, what an educating thread !! Thanks

Ibrahim

hmm lots of discussion

Jenni, you would have adored Joe Kuhn - a rare person who would say it like it is.  had several Mink and Lord sons and whom I acquired Agar from.  Loved the guy for all his causticness.  he leased several czech females from me and had quite a nice group of pups and following for his dogs. 

I dislike the term "prepotency" regardless of any charts.  I think it is misused and when used, it is used in such a way to sway those they are talking to to convince them that the dog in question has some special power or not. 

And you are staying in the breed so you have known characteristics to include many many similar qualities that are genetic.

Breed your GSD to a non-biting, non-high prey "other breed" and see where he /she is prepotent.  Then look at the total # of pups in that litter and remember, each has a 50% probability of having the sire or dam show it's genes. 

In the 80's, Don von Driedorferick (hope I spelled that correctly) had 4 offspring to make the top 10 in the bundesseiger.   Smart breeding with great bitches, Smart placement of quality puppies.  (I had two of his offspring). 
Another comparison now with a Czech dog, Baron z Pohranicni straze who produced stellarly in Czechoslovakia, comes to US and production is lukewarm.
Why does Secretariat produce great racehorses mostly through female offspring rebred for a racing horse?  Is he a genetic racer or is he just a great combination of athletic ability and desire to run?
I love marketing.
I think we sometimes see stellar and believe all we see is genetic material.  I think we sometimes see ruined and believe it is genetic material.   In this process of dog selection, there are not enough objectively measured parameters but it is what it is. 
Great discussion with Peter Mazur, who head the breeding of Policia kennels on genetics and selection.  Breed the male in question to several completely unrelated, different types of females to see what is produced and go from there.   One cannot measure much until the offspring are "old enough" and "handled well".    There is a lot more to this but hey, I have to work. 

Cheers!

Nancy Rhynard
www.westwoodkennels.com

Breed your GSD to a non-biting, non-high prey "other breed" and see where he /she is prepotent. Then look at the total # of pups in that litter and remember, each has a 50% probability of having the sire or dam show it's genes.

This test could be done with showlines from your description.LOL.

Ok guys it was a joke, I really don't want to see anymore videos of showlines doing bite work.

 QUote: 
I dislike the term "prepotency" regardless of any charts. I think it is misused and when used, it is used in such a way to sway those they are talking to to convince them that the dog in question has some special power or not.

I think it is overused. I have seen it more in showlines, where a particular male has sons that look like him and grandsons and great grandsons that all have a strong resemblance to him.

I have had a couple dogs in the past that I would use the term, but I have had an awful lot of dogs. These dogs were used and produced themselves despite the bitch used. However, when I say this, people like to say that I am disparaging the bitch.

For breeding, I don't really think about prepotency as it is not really going to happen. I think it is just that rare. I wish it wasn't, as how cool would that be, but that is wishful thinking and not reality. I have had, and have been told of this bitch or that bitch that always produced really really nice pups. The best GSD example for me is probably Steffi tiekerhook.  I cannot tell you how many times I have had people who have had pups from her, or even grandpups from her say that she was great. THat is what these threads are supposed to tell us. I just think that it is really really rare for it to happen, so most people have not seen it. That is too bad, as it makes life a heck of a lot easier.

I also think from this thread that we can see how different people's opinion of how to breed is really different, and very personal to them. LOL People get pretty fired up.

I like to ask people how many litters they have bred, so I can see if they are actively breeding or just occasionally breeding. People that breed a lot usually have very different thoughts than people that breed occasionally. Not better or worse, just different.

This has been a good thread no matter what went on. I am happy that people are still posting, as you can never ever learn enough when it comes to breeding. Even if you do not agree with someone, there is still information that you can use from that person.

Honestly I think if your are a geneticist and you can scientifically test for prepotency then by all means. If not then I think nothing compares with experience. I see all these charts and such to be half ass attempts at a very complex endeavor.

Funny how noone ever mentions environment or how that can effect the numbers of desirable offspring. There are way too many variables to be 100% sure. At best its not even an educated guess because you dont know and cant know all the variables. Such is the nature of animal science. 

Nice Jeff.  I think there is much yet to uncover.  I won't tell you my # of litters though but then at my age, you won't ask that either! 

German Shepherds have really not changed much over the span of some decades that I see. You can look back at old tapes of the Bundesseiger and WUSV to see that.   I do see better soundness and a selection for structure.  Bite, prey, etc pretty much the same and perhaps there could be a malinois in someone's shed somewhere.  (can't believe I just said that!)  But the bell curve may move a little north for some or south for others but stil stays the bell curve.   With ability to scent being in all dogs yet some breeds better than others, GSD's with high tracking scores and FH's have a tendency to produce themselves. 

Cheers!

Nancy Rhynard
www.westwoodkennels.com

 With ability to scent being in all dogs yet some breeds better than others, GSD's with high tracking scores and FH's have a tendency to produce themselves.

Very interesting observation Nancy, thanks for sharing.
Ibrahim

I see all these charts and such to be half ass attempts at a very complex endeavor.

C'mon now, that chart isn't supposed to do anything but convey a concept for people who just don't get it as well with words.  Particularly, French folk ;-)  Of course it's complex, and theories are simplified.  Believe it or not, I agree with most things duke says, he's just crabby all the time.

Yeah but a lot of people will just take the chart and run with it instead of doing the research and learning about the subject in depth.

So you are saying that Schutzhund FH tracking is an accurate measure of a dog's scenting ability? 

 Many times I think we do it more compicated than it has to be, if you look around you see there are studs that are linebreed tight, and some not  linebreed in any greater amount and both types can produce bad or well. In the end what counts is what a dog produce not looking on a papper and see how many common ancestors there are or finding a certain ideal level of linebreeding. If you do find a stud that is prepotent for many of his good genes you still must find some ofspring of him that have the same ability if this prepotency should be carried on, and due to the fact the mother is repsonsible for 50% and we can´t select what genes get passed on we are back in finding males that get good offspring with good females and not males that are prepotent for several generations. I mean is ferro prepotent for several generations or do we find him in many pedigrees because he had many offspring that probably was mated to some good bitches and hence his name wil live on in many pedigrees?

There are probably many nice new studs to choose from but as long as they haven´t showed that they produced anything it´s just a guessing game. If he is going to be called a stud he should at least have some documented ability, HD/ED can be measured, other healthproblems is more tricky and probably takes some "insideinformation" from breeders that are willing to share what they seen or talking to others who have dogs from the same stud. The same goes for workingability, both breeder and puppybuyer can only know this by seeing some offspring in work or if they have contacts that have seen hopefully more than a couple of dogs from a certain stud.  All this seems to be seriously lacking in US what I understand, too large and to few dogs tested in both health or work, or?

One intressting way to measure at least some basic character and drives I guess is some of the "progenytesting" you can find in sweden for example, at least this can be done by everyone without any pretraining and you can see for yourself how the offspring of a certain stud scores on the test, if he have a few litters with different females I guess you can get a hint of what he produces measured in a more objective way. Other than such test all you have is really to see/know some of the offspring in workingvenues and far from all dogs enter such.


One more nice dog, good HD/ED in offspring and seems to produce nice workingcharacter even if he "only" had 40-50 offspring yet, one of his litter of 4 had all dogs going to the police with  good selectiontest results, even if that litter as in many cases also had a good mother behind it;) also know of of another male with some similraties in his pedigree that are supposed to be very strong and also had a few litters even if only few of them had been evaluated so far but they looked very promising when looking at their testscores and "word of mouth",
www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/pedigree/554720.html