German shepherd 1957 all the GSD experts here watch good - Page 6

BW: I don't have showline dogs. I have 100% WGWL.

Why don't use use showline dogs for your purposes ? Cannot temperamentally or structurally do real work, once you introduce something more challenging than running around a ring ?

Another painful read for a GSD-lover like me (how much more politically incorrect can you get, from the German police's point of view):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8720618/German-police-phase-out-the-German-Shepherd-in-favour-of-Belgian-version.html

HM: They may not be GSDs anymore, but they certainly ain't Maligators.

Maybe true. But irrelevant, once you factor in the extensive (and increasing) usage of the Malis by the various forces around the world, especially the elite ones who have no constraints when it comes to funds. As they say, before you chuck stones, look in the mirror.

aykay that newsarticle is giving a wrong interpretation of factual truth, I sell to several german providers of policedogs and regularly discuss this matter with german police and customs officers, and it all boils down to money

in general the german police pays € 1000 less for a good german shepherd than any worldwide VENDOR is paying, so any good GSD is offered and sold anywhere else than in Germany, the german shepherds offered by vendors to Germany are the ones that could not be sold anywhere else thus lower quality
Many policeforces and military worldwide want ONLY GSD and for every 10 policedogs I ship out it is about 8 GSD on 2 malinois

to find good malinois, be it for sport or police you have to work ten times hardr than to find good GSD
for any detection/tracking job a german shepherd generally speaking, is better than a malinois

finally , even most malinois that function well in police or KNPV are really not malinois but mixes, many times mixed with GSD or dogge breeds

The original post, which I’ve been commenting on, didn’t mention anything about SL/WL. It lumped all GSD into one big category of “not healthy because the angulation of the back end is different than all other breeds.” I mentioned earlier I don’t do the SL/WL bashing thing because it never goes anywhere and is a completely useless discussion. This has been a discussion about structure and anatomy…the reason SL don’t work as well as WL has ZERO to do with their structure and anatomy. Their structure doesn’t physically prevent them from doing the work that 99% of people ask them to do. The drive/temperament is where the issue lies. I have no problem discussing how the drives of SLs prevent them from working to the level I want dogs to work. An understanding of what the show ring looks for is not a bad thing, you don’t have to agree with it, but to understand what they’re trying to get at isn’t a bad thing. Of course, they leave out a large piece of testing/breeding dogs, but that is not what the original discussion centered on. The original post was a video of various dogs…more than likely what would’ve been considered WL of that time…and was insinuating that the structure of those dogs is healthier even though absolutely ZERO evidence was provided about the health of the dogs in the video.

BTW…in order to be in the working class, the dogs have to be titled. So they have to SUCCEED at a title. Sure, most get by with a title at a club trial with their home helper on their home field, or they get sent off to Germany for training/titling, but they still SUCCEED at the title. Is the work high level? 99% of the time it’s not, but they do it. Is it up to my standard? Not even close, but the dogs perform the work.

I prefer the dogs I have because of my own personal reasons, in the same way that everyone here prefers the dogs they train. I don’t care to insult the whole breed just because there is a portion of it that doesn’t do the work or looks different than what I like. Those of you again throwing in the extreme examples of the Belgian Malinois which are being used in special forces and K9 units, are focusing on the top level dogs. That can very easily be done for GSD as well. Plenty of K9 departments use them…in fact, in my area you’ll be hard pressed to find a malinois in a police departement. The GSD nationals in the United States had 5 times the amount of dogs that the malinois nationals had (and the USCA nationals has qualification requirements, the AWMA doesn’t). The scores at the USCA nationals were over all much higher than they were at the AWMA as well.

As I stated earlier, the majority of malinois I’m seeing worked in various bite sports don’t impress me at all. In fact, if I judged the breed just based on what you see at club/pet level training, I would think they’re inept at everything. I was just watching videos of one of the highest level trainers and breeders of malinois in the United States last night…the dogs weren’t impressive at all and wouldn’t come close to a podium at a GSD national or world event. Compare them to the highest level of GSD in the sport today and you’ll definitely think that they’re a lesser breed. There are negatives and positives to each breed, but you have to focus on the dogs themselves and not the breed as a whole. There are good and bad examples of every breed, we can all sit here for hours posting videos of bad dogs and good dogs from each breed, and it won’t get us anywhere.

 

Thank you duke for giving us some real information, not some biased internet news article. The fact remains and I see this all the time...a malinois is a way bigger risk as a puppy than a german shepherd. All things equal with titled/health tested parents, knowledgeable breeder, high expectation of success, I'd go with the GSD puppy each and every time if I want to have the highest chance of success when it comes to sport or real work.

Duke that said it all

But the question is if the changing anatomy of the GSD has no correlation to healthproblems,especially problems with the back. There are many breeds which anatomy hasn´t changed really, especially those who have been breed for function, even some GSDs haven´t changed much compared to how the used to look. What is the use of something that "looks" good when trotting if it´s not the ultimate structure for a workingdog, why didn´t the old herding GSDs look like that, why not sleddogs and wolves with extreme endurance.

Yes, thanks for posting that, Duke. I've said several
times over the past 4 or 5 years that the Rise Of The
Malinois has been exaggerated by various media. And
some sports enthusiasts.
Many more people have got Malis, it's true, but there
are still Police and Armed Forces and Prison Services
all around the world where the GSD is still perfectly
acceptable, sometimes actually the preferred breed.

Johan…everything is a progression. Why doesn’t the brick cell phone of 20 years ago look like an iPhone? Advancement. Better understanding of movement and efficiency has led the GSD to develop the angulation that they have. Again with the wolves…did I not just prove 2 pages ago that it’s not out of the question that a GSD could move just as much as a wolf but probably could do more? Or at the minimum a balanced GSD can move just as much as a wolf but with greater efficiency? Sled dogs are asked to perform a completely different task than GSD. THEY DO NOT TROT. They are also very different anatomically from German Shepherds due to the different work that they are expected to do. Oh and if you’re into sled dogs you’ll probably know that they have been getting mixed with hounds and other dogs recently in order to make a “better” specimen for that task as well because there are other breeds that bring more to the table in regards to pulling a sled and running a race.

The understanding of anatomy, dogs, and training has grown more in the last 20 years than it has in the centuries before that combined. Why doesn’t the original GSD look like today’s? THEY HAD LESS TO BREED FROM. They had to pick from what was available, and they bred the best of what was available…especially during the establishment of the breed. After that, the lines were very tight, so again, not much variation. Only after enough genetic variability due to an increase in the number of dogs were there options to breed to different stock. People tend to forget how “young” the breed is. People really need to recognize the technological and informational jumps that have been made in the 20th century. Knowledge has grown exponentially, and to expect that to not affect things like domesticated animals is a joke.

People looking for the “old” GSD are funny. It’s usually due to the fact that they just can’t train or compete at the level that is expected today for higher levels. They want to turn back the clock to when a dog could walk down a field with its head almost to the ground, ears pinned all the way back, take a minute to retrieve a dumbbell, and still score 98. They see the old stuff at the world level and realize that the dog they’ve been training can do the job as good or better. Makes them think that if the sport and breed was more like it was 30 years ago and that way instead of barely getting that club title, their dog would be competing for a shot on the world team. But since that’s not the present situation, there are dogs and handlers head and shoulders above what they have and they’re stuck struggling to get through a club title.

Quote: "Johan…everything is a progression. Why doesn’t the brick cell phone of 20 years ago look like an iPhone? Advancement."

These are not cellphones we are talking about. These are living creatures, just like human beings are living creatures. If the GSD has changed, it is purely due to selective breeding. Selective breeding that selects for certain temperamental and structural traits, which effectively is the "flavor of the day". What one fails to see here, is that when you indulge in selective breeding for the structure, that the show-fancier at that point in time considers as winnable in the show-ring (the roached backs, the hinged backs, the droopy rears are/were all fashionable at some point in time), the unsaid fact is that the practice also loses certain desirable characteristics from the breed for ever (specifically on the temperamental side), which the non-selected individuals had. Resulting in the breed's bane, as we see not only in the showdogs but also in other non-GSD breeds.

The experiment below shows the drastic effects of selective breeding, where the resultant individuals that started from the same base stock changed so dramatically, in such a relatively small period in time, that they might as well have belonged to different breeds:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwq3rs_evolution-in-action-the-silver-fox-experiment_shortfilms

Thanks, Duke for sharing that perspective on the German police. However, it is also a fact that quite a few departments in the US are preferring the usage of Malis more and more. Quite a few special units, including the ones in the region of the world where I am in currently, have completely moved away from GSDs into Malis.....cost is one of the reasons but the real reason (as stated by the people in this part of the world) is the lack of availability of healthy GSDs in high enough numbers without the unhealthy overangulations and droopy rears that have come from the show influence. I have seen enough of the "old blood" malis that are not the prey monkeys that one typically talks about when it comes to Malis, but have enough defense in them for a healthy balance, and solid nerve-base to cap their hectic natures to focus on the task at hand.

What one cannot deny is that the Mali's structure certainly is better built for work, than a majority of the SV-crafted current GSD world. My GSDs (and Duke's dogs that I have seen personally) don't have the hinged or roached backs or droopy rears and have well balanced temperaments and structures that can move, jump, trot, gallop, think, problem-solve and work really well......but that's not the case with the overwhelming majority of the GSDs that populate the world currently, which unfortunately belong to the category that wins the sieger shows.