the diverse german shepherd - Page 1

its really amazing how diverse the german shepherd is....................all kinds of colours and sizes.
i guess the only thing that should be of matter is temperament and workability...............good solid strucuture too

I think temperament, work ability and conformation, all should be of matter and importance, color comes last as personal preference

I agree with Ibrahim. Definitely temperment first.

the one thing that kind of amazes me is that German Shepherds have traditionally ranked #3 on the intelligence list of all breeds.  Yet I don't hear people talking about how smart their Shepherds are.  Dobermans usually rank and #4 or #5 depending on who does the list.  And when talking with Doberman breeders you will hear them talking about intelligence as well as ease of training.  Come on Shepherd Breeders be proud of what you have and let people know how smart they are and how fast they learn.  My 6 month old learned how to retrieve the ball by looking out the window and  watching the 15 month old do it.  Now that is smart.

i always thought that only the working lines were important......................i was wrong they are all important as long as they breed them with the big 3,temperament,work ability, and right conformation.

enough german shepherds to go around for everyone........

Ibrahim: I think temperament, work ability and conformation, all should be of matter and importance, color comes last as personal preference

Not wanting to rain too much on this parade but I think in the current world of the show-GS-dog, the above preference would be laughed and jeered at, since it has not been so for at least the past couple of decades.  Can you remember even a single non-Black-and-Red dog getting into the top ratings among the showline GSDs at the German Sieger show ?  Say a non-saddle-backed blanket wolf-gray Sable ?  Or an All-black ?  Or a Bi-color ? Or a melanistic blanket B&T ?  The whole show-circuit has become a uniform sea of saddle backed Black-and-Reds and the common public (who don't know any better) have been slowly acclimated into associating GSDs with the saddle-backed Black-and-Red coloration.  So color being a last preference is patently untrue in the real world.

Now coming to the other things like temperament and workability, other than the working line German Shepherds, I think hitting on these aspects with the showline specimens available these days, is an exercise in futility.  There may be a few among the showlines that might show some good working aspects here or there, but now put an AVERAGE WL dog (let alone a top WL dog) and pit him/her against the showlines that show "working ability" and the showline  is so badly outclassed that it is no longer even funny.   Without working ability and temperament, why are we breeding and promoting these specimens as ambassadors of the GSD world ?

The only thing that the showlines have going for them nowadays is a lot of money that keeps them exactly the way they are.  The working temperament has been lost from that whole swathe of GSDs a long time back.  They purely run on looking pretty and trotting pretty and passing breed-surveys  (with "courage tests" no less !) where the whole thing has become a charade, and pretty much nothing else.  Even the breed tests have been progressively diluted to accomodate the dilution in the dog's physical attributes (the "conformation" that some people erroneously attribute as a good attribute in the showlines).

I say start over by calling the showline GSDs as something entirely different than GSDs (just gut that whole crowd of dogs from the list of GSDs), and use the template of the Working Line GSDs (work ability, temperament, nerves and conformation) for moving the breed forward.

Yes intelligence is important too as well as health ofcourse, intelligence is genetic and environment has influence, well said  rtdmmcintyre

Aaykay - aren't you forgetting Timo ?


I'm glad someone mentioned 'health' ... at last.

i agree that working ability is where it all should start....................................the breed has to be able to do what it was bred for.........."a working dog"

the problem is the working lines are usually or can be way too much dog for the average dog owner................so what is left to do??

breed beautifull dogs who at least have some of their ancestors work traits still in them...........right??