Improving the breed - Page 9

So should the LC be bred or used as a stud dog;  of course with everything else in place, health cerf's;  titles, temperament, etc.?

The longcoats,long stock coats,etc., have not been seen in to many competitions,not because they are 'rare' in the working lines, more that they were 'rarely' admitted to as coming from...this dog or that dog
If they are faults, what self respecting,die hard 'work-aholic' is going to walk out onto the competition field with a darn long coat, cripes,that means they are no better than them long coat. Showlines...
I bet before the acceptance of coats, more of them working line babies,were thrown out with the bath water

I might use a longcoat for breeding if it met my criteria in all ways and did not have a soft coat. A soft coat would be a deal breaker for me.

Nans, like Blitzen, I think that decision would depend on the dogs which are
involved.  Certainly I would not want to reproduce any incorrectly textured coats.

Me, I'd generally fight shy of using a LSH dog or bitch at all, unless they'd
already proved outstandingly special in other respects  - and I certainly would
not mate two together -  and I would probably NEVER use an open coated Long
Coat animal for any breeding.  But even now that the position has reverted to
being able to Show them, I wouldn't really be very interested in breeding more of
them.  On the off-chance they would be among that percentage which has truly
unmanageable coats;   I wouldn't want to inflict that on a puppy purchaser.  
Even knowing I could sell every 'fluffy' puppy 3x as fast as the rest of the litter !

As far as breeding a long coat, it takes BOTH parents  to carry the gene to even be able to produce coated pups, so as long as a LC is bred to a SC which didn't carry the LC gene you aren't going to get any coated pups anyway. And Hundmutter- I didn't mean to sound nasty towards you, I was just saying that Betoven so far hasn't has any matting, nor been any more a burr magnet than my stock coats. But he really doesn't have much long hair anyway.

Sure, you can avoid getting any, if you 'know your lines' -
e.g.  if I had a bitch I knew was carrying the L/C gene, but
hadn't produced any in a previous litter and didn't manifest
it herself, I would still avoid using a LSH stud on her.  UNLESS
I felt both he and she were such outstanding specimens I
was willing to risk getting several 'coats' in the proposed litter, in
order to perpetuate their other genetic make-up.

But in 'my' gsd-world, there is so little room for gambles and other
risks that the chances of that happening, with all the other factors
I'd want to take into account before breeding, are negligible.  Posters
may have noticed I take a very hard line against breeding for colours,
&/or with HD affected stock, etc ...

Yes you would "know your lines" regarding coat if you did DNA testing for coat length, and don't breed LCs  to each other, or to a SC carrying the LC gene, if you didn't want any coated pups.

kitkat, a long-stock coated bitch, Mona von der Döllenwiese, was the dam of a working line dog considered by many to be one of the top dogs in recent breed history--Yoshy von der Döllenwiese.  Mona herself was a SchH3 female, so I'd hardly say that there was any discarding of long-stock coat working line dogs back then, nor in the interim between when the SV banned the long stocks for breeding and when they were reinstated.  As for the long stocks not being seen in competition often because  no 'die hard work-aholic' handler would want to be seen working a long stock, that's just foolish.  The percentage of long-stock coats to stock coats is reasonably represented if you look at the dogs entered at a local trial level, and there have been long-stock coats in both national and international trials.  When you consider that most dogs competing at the national and international levels aren't handler/owner trained, generally having been acquired at over 12 months of age so the dog's hip status is already known and with at least a SchH1 to establish the dog's working potential, it's not really any surprise that you see few long-stock coats at the level of competition--such pups are generally purchased by people who intend to keep the dog for the animal's entire lifetime, not by trainers who obtain pups to start training and then later be marketed to ''professional' level competitors and breeders.

I've heard it said by several people who actually saw Mona Döllenwiese that when not 'tidied up' for the conformation ring, she was much more 'feathery' than her 'official' photo shows her to be; but without her in the breeding population, there would have been no Yoschy. Mona had a number of siblings, but none of them produced any offspring of his caliber, and Yoschy has gone on to produce Natz Tiekerhook, Amigo  & Aron Brachler See, Aline Mohnwiese [dam of the E-Mohnwiese litter w/Tom Leefdaalhof], Olly vd Horst, Henk & Hutch dunklen Zwinger, the 1997 T-litter Tiekerhook, to cite just a sampling...

Long-stock coats? Don't see any reason they shouldn't be in the breeding population, right along with the stock coats.

Good post Hexe! You forgot to mention that Yoschy was also V rated!

Good to know, thank you everyone.   Nan