Out-crossing GSD with other breeds - Page 14

hmmm

On page 40 of "The German Shepherd Dog in Word and Picture", in any edition, new or old, Capt. Stephanitz himself makes this statement, going through a lot of explanations of the differences and similarities of the GSD and the wolf, and giving a very long explanation why a wolf should not ever AGAIN be used in the blood of the GSD, he states (again page 40):

"I was able to observe this formation as well in a descendant from a wolf in the second generation, in Wolfi,von Wolfsnest, SZ 65." 

He was discussing skull formations in wolfs and dogs.  I have seen this dogs name also spelled Woelfi v. Wolfsnest, SZ 65.

I provide this here because many do not have the original english translation I referenced previously, but many do have later editions and can look for themselves.

What does this mean?  Does SZ 65 mean that this dog was registered by the SV?  Is this an admission of wolf blood in this dog and was this dog used in the early beginnings of the creation of the GSD?

Does anyone have the first printing, first edition, of this book?  If so, I would like to know what it says about this subject.  I would also like to buy it.

HOROWITZ, Geo.
The Alsatian wolf-dog. Its origin, history, and show points, working capabilities, etc..
Our Dogs, Manchester nd (1927). 155p, photos. Second revised edition. Flexicloth covers. Light marginal foxing of some pages.

I copied this from the net where it is available for purchase, (notice the title is Alsatian wolf-dog), and it is described as a history of the German Shepherd Dog.

Finally, do I have this understood correctly:  Horand von Grafrath (the breeds foundation dog) is listed as SZ 1, yet his parents are listed as SZ 153 and SZ 156, so I assume that after the SZ records were started, Stephanitz gave his first dog the #1 and then went back and started giving dogs that he could verify has having something to do with Horands lineage SZ numbers?  So, would that make SZ 65 come before or after SZ 1?  It is confusing.  Could there be two SZ 65's?  Thanks if you know.

A couple of observations if I may.

First re DDR's post and Wolfi. I am not familiar with the document that DDR cited ( tho would love a copy as I collect old GSD documents and standards etc). By any chance was it Elliott Humphrey who wrote it?  Since I do not know the author or the document I can not speak for its accuracy or provenance but for argument's sake let's assume the statement it true to the best of the author's knowledge.

First I wonder about the use of the W to indicate Wolf. We do know that three separate herding lines were used in the creation of the breed and one of those was the Wurttemburg  dogs. Would it not be possible to be as likely that the W stood for dogs from that heritage?

Secondly assume Wolfi is as is claimed above. What evidence is there of the following? 1. That Von Stephanitz ( abbreviated VS later) had a hand in the breeding of this dog or the use of him within the breed 2. What are the SV records as to the progeny of this dog and any other rulings. warnings or descriptions they have on record 3. Even if used in the early years of the breed did his/her ( some claim it's a bitch) progeny come forward as one of the founding lines of what is now known as the GSD. The fact that an animal is registered  with a breed registry does not speak to the survivability of that particular line - how many of you have had old beloved wonderful dogs and when you tried to go back for another = poof that kennel, line, strain was simply not there any more. Even the quote above speaks to that "This cross has been lost to the breed or so diluted that it is practically non-existent to-day"

Now re Do Right's quote from the VS English edition once again in absence of the original German edition I will withhold judgement. I do not speak or write German tho I can get the jist of a Koer report. This is in part due to the fact that "dog" German is very idiomatic - the German word for angulation if literally translated says long thigh bone. Which brings us back again to two things. Who was the translator ( and dog person or not) and the differences and similarities between the 2 languages. My one small exposure to German was in college and I appreciated the familiarity of much of the language to English (look at Old English, Old German and Gaelic - all related languages) for example buch and book. But what I personally found confounding was how very different the grammatical rules were for the two languages.

TIG, it was a short excerpt from, yes, something written by or recorded from lectures of Elliott Humphrey in the 20s. I believe it appeared in the Shepherd Review or something like that. I do not have the original document and do not have express copyright permission. The short quote is probably permissible under the "fair use" category.

My favorite frustration was the paragraph long sentence with a great variety of adverbs and adjectives but the action word - the verb was always at the very end of the sentence and then you had to go back and figure where exactly it was meant to go. Now as you can see - not a linguist - not even remotely in the same universe and I am not suggesting that the translation was not professionally done.  I am suggesting however that there can often be different meanings to the same words and how they are used or interpreted can depend on placement, emphasis thru punctuation and intent and translator agenda. Just as a small example.  VS might have said either of these but note in English the very different meaning based soley on the placement of the word "again"

 Again, I will not have that in my breed.     vs.   I will not have that in my breed again.  In the first he is emphatic about something he does not want where in the second he would be acknowledging a past mistake. If this distinction does not appear clear enough to you simply add the words "I say" in front of each sentence.

Next re Horowitz. Do right you made the comment "notice the title is Alsatian wolf-dog" . I do not believe anyone disputed this but keep in mind Mr. Horowitz was English and we have already explained that the term " Alsatian" came out of  England because of backlash against anything labeled "german" as a result of  WW1 and later WW2.  Since he seems to be widely quoted in the web promotion of the idea that GSD's are wolf derived here is another quote from him that doesn't seem to get quite as much press ""This brings us to the very important question as to whether there have ever been crossings between wolves and Alsatians. I may say at once that that is a rather difficult question to answer, for the simple reason that the whole matter is somewhat obscure; which is not to be wondered at if we remember that, even if such crossings were had recourse to, they took place at a time when there did not exist any control over the breeding of Alsatians." cited to p.9 of his bk.   " The emphasis is mine.

I am not one to never say never - too old for that - have learned the hard way.  I do find it intriguing that almost all of the web based sources pushing the wolf ancestry of the GSD comes from sources that for a variety of reasons have a bone to pick with the GSD and its history. The three biggies are the Wolfhybrid people , Tina Barber of Shiloh Shepherds and the White GSD people. I have been around long enough in the breed to watch the "revisonist" histories that have sprung up about whites and their place in the breed.  Note, I am not making a judgement re whites and their qualities just saying that a lot of people have been taken for a ride. I especially love the WGSD history which places them as an important part of the Austrian Hungarian Royal court.  Barber, enuf said tho again this is a quote from her site "My friend Jim in New Jersey has DOCUMENTED PROOF that MORE THAN HALF OF THE FIRST 10 SIEGER’S WERE DESCENDENTS OF WOLVES"  Isn't it strange that all these authors ( see Dresselhaus above) have friends with the proof but the proof is never produced.  Hmm!

I can not agrue with any of your statements TIG, mostly because you do leave yourself the out, that you are open to having your mind changed and may be wrong.  I too have an open mind and may be wrong.  But, at this point in the evidence presented, I feel that it is fifty-one percent yes and forty-nine percent no,  absent a statement form the SV ether diffinitely yes or diffinitely no.

I am amazed and suspicious that it has not been difinitely answered "no" to this day.  If it has and anyone knows where I may read that, I would be obliged.  I can not dind it addressed anywhere.

As most here know, I was a cop and specialized in obtaining drug search warrants.  One thing that was accepted to obtain a Judge's signature on a search warrant petition, was a concept known as "tacitadmission", which means that if someone does not deny something, or if they dance around the answer to a question, it can legally be accepted as a tacit admission that the answer that would hurt them the most is most likely true.  Given the fact that a request for a search warrant does not have to have positive proof, but rather "probable cause", I equate the non-denial of this "allegation" by some, such as Horowitz, Dresselhaus and Barber, along with others, as a "tacid admission", and feel that it sways towards being true.

But, I dunno for sure.  Stephanitz does indicate in his own words in his own book, that some dogs used, whether or not that particular lineage still exists or not (it would be hard to accept that it does not in SOME capacity, however diluted), had wolf blood, and he went out of his way to say that it should not be done AGAIN.  (emphasis on the word "again" is mine).

For those who may want to know, here is the diffinition of the word:

Tacit: 1. expressed without words or speech.  2. understood or made known though not actually expressed.

If it it good enough to allow us cops to kick in your door, stick a gun in your face and order you to the floor, and then trash your house.  It must hold a heck of a strong legal precedent.

Of course some could view it as like the old question "when did you stop beating your wife".  If one does not deny ever having beat his wife, is that a tacit admission of having done so?  I dunno.  You tell me.  If I challenge someone on this site to post a pic and prove a claim that they have made, and they do not.  Is it a tacit admission that they lied about their claim?  You tell me.

Please forgive my bad spelling and typing in the above post. For some reason tonight, I am having keyboard trouble.  Some of the keys are actually putting different letters than my fingers are hitting, and the spacer is not working normally.  I guess I will be getting a new keyboard tomorrow.

I think the real relevance to the role of the Wolf in the foundation of the GSD breed, is the claim by some people that the shyness and nerve problems that seem to lurk so much in the GSD comes from the wolf. Personally, I think shyness, spookiness and thinness of nerve are the biggest temperament problems in the breed today, and my research suggests that it always was the biggest problem of the breed (arguably just as much or more than hip dysplasia). When you combine shyness with the natural aggression that most GSDs have, you get fear biting behavior or too much sharpness ,which have always been and still are big temperament problems in the breed in all the lines, in some lines more than others, but never completely eliminated.

One of the founding dog types that went into the original GSD recipe were the Thuringian dogs in addition to the Swabian and Wurttemberg. Some people claim that the Thuringian dogs had quite a bit of wolf in them which is why they were the source of the sharp standing ears and other wolf-like looks of the GSD, as well as the propensity to shyness. So even if the dogs registered as GSDs in the early, early days did not have wolf blood directly, the fact that they were of Thuringian origin or Thuringian mixed with Swabian and/or Wurttemberg implied wolf genetics not too far from the surface.

Which if the above is true or plausible, argues against bringing back some wolf blood into the GSD, because it has always been there! And it has brought with it some pretty big problems that we've never really been able to fix.

Ok Horowitz - please go back up and read the light gray quote. I do not read this as affirming wolf ancestryin GSDs.  Re Barber and Dresslehaus why in the world would the SV bring itself down to the level of these conmen/self promotors? So no I do not consider that a tacit admission.

Re AGAIN - I merely ask you to read, again, the two sentences I posted and tell me that it is not feasible that a translation error might be responsible for what you see in your book.

Why do I think it is unlikely that wolf crosses were deliberately sought out and used in the creation of the GSD? Two reasons. The first lay in VS description of why he embarked on this venture. It may be in his book but I believe I read it in one of his yearly letters. He describes being on calvary manuvers the first time he saw herding dogs in action. He came up over a hill and below him was a shepherd and his dog(s) working the flock. He saw the beauty not only in the setting but in the working relationship of the shepherd and his dog. Secondly during the time span we are talking about, VS was not trying to create a Schutzhund, police, guide dog or any other of  the other dozen occupations GSDs hold today. He was trying to create a great HERDING dog and to that end he kept for many years a breed registry open to an active working herding dogs .

I think DDR's post of 11/29 is a pretty good description of what you might want in that herding dog. So tell me what would a wolf cross bring to the table in terms of selecting for those traits that VS could not get from the many and varied herding dogs which existed in Germany at the time?  What would a wolf cross bring that could destroy the herding traits and characteristics that he was selecting for?

Some such as Coppinger(an academic who is NOT a dog person and never will be) claim that herding is merely truncated prey behavior. Some who actually have done it feel that herding is a much more complex and developed behavior than that. Small example a wolf wil routinely split an animal from the flock - that's supper.  A good herding dog often knows instinctively the "look back" where a singleton is picked up and brought back to the flock and the flock brought to the shepherd. That is not merely truncated prey behavior.

Ok Horowitz - please go back up and read the light gray quote. I do not read this as affirming wolf ancestryin GSDs.  Re Barber and Dresslehaus why in the world would the SV bring itself down to the level of these conmen/self promotors? So no I do not consider that a tacit admission.

Re AGAIN - I merely ask you to read, again, the two sentences I posted and tell me that it is not feasible that a translation error might be responsible for what you see in your book.

Why do I think it is unlikely that wolf crosses were deliberately sought out and used in the creation of the GSD? Two reasons. The first lay in VS description of why he embarked on this venture. It may be in his book but I believe I read it in one of his yearly letters. He describes being on calvary manuvers the first time he saw herding dogs in action. He came up over a hill and below him was a shepherd and his dog(s) working the flock. He saw the beauty not only in the setting but in the working relationship of the shepherd and his dog. Secondly during the time span we are talking about, VS was not trying to create a Schutzhund, police, guide dog or any other of  the other dozen occupations GSDs hold today. He was trying to create a great HERDING dog and to that end he kept for many years a breed registry open to an active working herding dogs .

I think DDR's post of 11/29 is a pretty good description of what you might want in that herding dog. So tell me what would a wolf cross bring to the table in terms of selecting for those traits that VS could not get from the many and varied herding dogs which existed in Germany at the time?  What would a wolf cross bring that could destroy the herding traits and characteristics that he was selecting for?

Some such as Coppinger(an academic who is NOT a dog person and never will be) claim that herding is merely truncated prey behavior. Some who actually have done it feel that herding is a much more complex and developed behavior than that. Small example a wolf wil routinely split an animal from the flock - that's supper.  A good herding dog often knows instinctively the "look back" where a singleton is picked up and brought back to the flock and the flock brought to the shepherd. That is not merely truncated prey behavior.