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by Mike Johnson on 06 February 2011 - 20:02
I think all you have to do is look at the historical VA list on the sidebar of this site. As far back as you go there are heavy boned dogs who won, they did tend to be a little lighter early on, but the heavy boned dogs were there. after the thirties they were the norm. Now I do agree to some extent that if I was to choose a dog to heard sheep/cattle I would look for a small, slender dog. Those traits would be best, but you would sacrafice strength, toughness, and durability.
As to the oversized dogs, that is simply irresponsible breeding. some people took the biggest dogs they could find and bred them, SIZE was the ONLY criteria, health and balance were never considered. I would bet that if you took a top tier breeder and told him to develope a line that adhered to ALL standards EXCEPT size and that you wanted "oversized dogs" you would get a very different quality of "oversized" GSD than you have now.
The thing here is that MAX saw strictly hearing dogs and did not like them. That why he did what he did. He wanted a MULTI-PURPOSE dog, the world was full of great herding breeds that piss all over themselves when you look at them sideways or bite anything that come with/in 100 yds of them. He did not like those strictly herdering breeds. Even as we speak the breed is evolving. Police depts. want small dogs that can search cars for drugs w/o tearing everything up, in out done. The protection dogs tend to be a little larger and heavier boned. These are generalizations, and there are exceptions. I think that both are fine, in fact good if they were all clones you would lose the main trait of the breed "Best at nothing.....2nd best at everything"
P.S. those sables are gorgeous dogs
As to the oversized dogs, that is simply irresponsible breeding. some people took the biggest dogs they could find and bred them, SIZE was the ONLY criteria, health and balance were never considered. I would bet that if you took a top tier breeder and told him to develope a line that adhered to ALL standards EXCEPT size and that you wanted "oversized dogs" you would get a very different quality of "oversized" GSD than you have now.
The thing here is that MAX saw strictly hearing dogs and did not like them. That why he did what he did. He wanted a MULTI-PURPOSE dog, the world was full of great herding breeds that piss all over themselves when you look at them sideways or bite anything that come with/in 100 yds of them. He did not like those strictly herdering breeds. Even as we speak the breed is evolving. Police depts. want small dogs that can search cars for drugs w/o tearing everything up, in out done. The protection dogs tend to be a little larger and heavier boned. These are generalizations, and there are exceptions. I think that both are fine, in fact good if they were all clones you would lose the main trait of the breed "Best at nothing.....2nd best at everything"
P.S. those sables are gorgeous dogs
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