If you had a Magic Wand.... - Page 6

for me this is my magic wand dog good structure nice bone goog colour ,good head. Drives that are cambut strong. good clear head . overall very open dog with excellent ability in pp home guarding .very reliable around family members. And good with strangers if introduce properly but never a pal more of a take ya or leave ya type of dog. 

Perhaps I should spell out exactly what I believe was wrong in what Mithuna said:

A) the time to assess things like depth of chest, to see if the dog is something you consider would add benefits to your breeding programme, is when the dog is mature enough to be bred; not while its a baby.

Given the rate at which dogs change as they grow, even an assessment purely for 'heart & lung room' from a working perspective would be premature at this point.

B) anybody looking for even a 'slightly' larger head on any female, not the least a pup, does not understand secondary sex characteristics, and is headed straight down the road to join those in China who want GSDs with heads like mastiffs !

If Veronica had been in the least bit 'snipy' in her head, there might have been some degree of justification for criticism ... but I don't think anyone who actually knows what they are talking about in judging to the breed's Standard would call that head snipy.


Then, if you add in that majority of 'pet' people who don't know what they are talking about either and DO judge what dog to buy primarily on what it looks like and they find beautiful, is exactly why we have a problem.

I admit I don't know how to breed great dogs but I do know how to the breed dogs that would be great sellers.

Just take the standard and exaggerate everything in particular head, bone, angulation, size, weight....there's your key to commercial success.

The ratio of people in the market who know what they are looking at to the people that buy what they think looks good to them personally is about zero.

Hundmutter,  

Jenni, that really is a nice-looking pup!

Here's Eska at about the same age (no, that's NOT me in the background...I'm the one bribing her with a treat.)  Her croup looks a bit steep in this photo, but if you saw a photo of her now, that's not the case. Wish I could get a current stacked picture, but it's hard to do that when you live alone, and your doggie friends aren't into showing.

I DO first pick a dog for its appearance, then the next thing, is research the pedigree, then ask the breeder LOTS of questions. I chose Eska because I liked what I saw - nothing exaggerated, nice feminine head, little more angulation than your average working line, which would give her a nicer gait, limbs well-proportioned with nice angulation of the pasterns, good bone. I just looked at the photo, and thought, DAMN! That's a nice puppy!

I'd like Eska to be a bit bigger -she's only about 53 lbs. - but I also believe with the show line GSD, we've sacrificed agility by increasing size and bulk. Eska is incredibly agile and fast. Her rear leg muscles are like iron, and she could do the old scaling wall they used to have in the Schutzhund test with no problem whatsoever. I have her nose prints 7 feet up on my patio door to prove it!  Her nick-name is Eska-Roo... 

Sun, there is a big difference between liking the look of a particular pup when you are already sold on the breed, and the kind of choosing for looks I'm talking about ! What I mean is the sales-friendly picture of the chocolate-box style fluffy puppy pictures online & elsewhere, that do not ask whether the buyer is taking into account how little time their new dog will stay like that !

This thread is a perfect explanation of what the problem is with the breed…people falling in love with their own dogs, believing they’re the best examples of the breed, and planning on breeding them without having any objective testing done of them at all. Beautiful or ugly, none of it matters. Until people start asking others for opinions about their dogs and objectively testing them in venues outside their living room, nothing will change.

And then blaming the "clueless pet buyers" for the choices of the breeders.

BW if it suits u may we see one of your dog u seem to have a very high standard .as I think i do my male has had many a test for temperament protection obedience and had done very well on all .he is 7years old now and still a power house and is built at 42 kg leen muscular frame strong bone out of 2litter I have breed all pups went on to do top security work with police airports and private pp. And they are real work jobs not ipo sport witch a dog is conditioned for years to do

@Beetree - better than trying to pretend it has nothing to do with it ! I'd say it was a more or less equal responsibility; you can hardly argue that there are no breeders doing what it takes to sell puppies.

 

Besides; there is no need to be 'clueless', really, in this day & age, with all the IT available, is there ?

Good post BW.