Got yourself an aloof GSD? Its your own fault - Page 5

I've only had two female gsd pups from 8 weeks old,  and both had remarkably different temperaments from the first 5 minutes regarding independance and aloofness, so this thread is very interested for me to read!   The first one, on her first day home,  would wander completely out of sight in the yard and go to sleep for a couple hours out of sight,  wake up, stretch, wander off to pee and go looking for a drink of water.  At just 8 weeks old she couldn't care less about where anyone or anything else was.  If she happened to come across you, fine.  I had never seen such a young pup that was THAT independant!   She was hard to bond with, we managed it through a lot of obedience training and crate training,  over time it a relationship slowly developed where she liked to work and looked to me for it and we became close.  The second pup was a totally different.  Bonded instantly,  walked away from mom and pups and followed me everywhere from the literal moment we met.   Aloof with strangers,  pleasant but calm with other dogs,  always with an eye on me and ready to do/go whatever I am doing.  She is a bit less confident than that first pup, and not such an alpha attitude;  more of a "right hand dog" type but without much aspiration to leadership.  We have a much stronger working (training) relationship, and she is more curious and active, with more of a sense of humor if you will.   They were fascinating to compare, and threads like this always make me think about the two of them!

A hard dog, means a dog that can recover quickly. Not a dog that works hard, bites hard or acts like a raving lunatic on the field. I full appreciate a dog that can be hard as nails on the field and walk off, be given a hug by awaiting children, snuggle up to the cat on a cold nite and lay beside the bed quietly. My dog is so stable and versatile, I have no doubts he could certify as a therapy dog or SED. He makes a great pet, and makes a cops wet dream. This is what I wish all GSD's could accomplish. Bottom line, he was bred to work and work he does. Anyone who breeds with no care for the work aspect, needs a whole in the head. Enough pets are produced even by the best breeders, trying for working dogs. As far as show...it's a lost cause. Not even the same animals.

Very well said.  Wow, look at that, 4pack, yet another person who tosses around the term "hard" but has no clue what the definition of a hard dog is, oh but they know about protection.  Nice of you to try and school them, don't know if it will "take" though!  SV has not been able to get it right in some time (according to snaiper) but snaiper  DOSE???? WTF's a "dose" anyways!  Pretty arrogant to put yourself above the SV, at least in my opinion, but  thanks for the laugh.  As I said, grip work is a better guage of the all around dog than agility or therapy or AKC obedience or  fly ball or pretty much most other stuff.  If you think about it, dogs from working programs or show programs that pay attention to the work are more than able to fill the needs of the rest as far as other types of work like therapy or whatever you need a well bred GSD to do.  Again, though I do not think it should be limited to schuthund, I also think a lot of many other grip sports, KNPV, all the Rings, and that crazy ass thing 4Pack does too! 

"I full appreciate a dog that can be hard as nails on the field and walk off, be given a hug by awaiting children, snuggle up to the cat on a cold nite and lay beside the bed quietly".

Amen to that, 4pack-the most sensible statement I've seen on this thread (orginal poster aside) yet. I currently have a year old male from working lines (Igor v.d. Staelduinhoeve x Okette vom Kraftwerk)  that loves his OB, has drives out the ying yang,  calmly accepts the affections shown by my pre-teen neices and nephews (one with autism) AND can turn off when needed.

And, I may add, I am truly INSULTED when someone says I know nothing about my dog because I am ignorant in the realm of "grip work". Jeepers!  

Oh jeez, this is getting old and tiresome.  I said if you are not knowledgable in either grip work or HGH herding than you have no business BREEDING GSDs.  If that INSULTS you - GOOD!

wow, very interesting read.   im with yvette.  send me the nasty bugger.  is it there fault for ending up with a dog they cant handle or the breeder for selling them a dog that may grow up and be too much for  a "pet"?   my thought, too many breeders who dont know what their pups will or can be when they grow up.

why breed hard dogs?  to make up for the others weekness.  same as why working breeders will breed to a show dog every once in a while, to bring back structure. 

sure everyone has  the best dog in the world, but if we let reality set in we need dogs of all types to breed back to so things can be balanced out. 

is schutzhund the best test for the overall picture of the gsd?  maybe not.   but one has to admit that it test a lot more areas than other activities ( say tracking alone, or ob by itself). 

from the standard on this site.

2) Temperament, Character and Abilities

Sound nerves, alertness, self-confidence, trainability, watchfulness, loyalty and incorruptibility, as well as courage, fighting drive and hardness, are the outstanding characteristics of a purebred German Shepherd Dog. They make his suitable to be a superior working dog in general, and in particular to be a guard, companion, protection and herding dog.
His ample scenting abilities, added to his conformation as a trotter, make it possible for him to quietly and surely work out a track without bodily strain and with his nose close to the ground. This makes him highly useful as a multipurpose track and search dog.

seems like protection, grip work, would be very helpful to carry out these task.

john

I said if you are not knowledgable in either grip work or HGH herding than you have no business BREEDING GSDs

Mmm, I will say I disagree.

I like grip sports, and am knowledgeable of them, but do not have the time nor money to travel 3 hours one way for 10 minutes of protection work.  I can train my dogs in agility, obedience, and tracking all in the same day for $25.

There are some trials where I compete in agility and obedience on the same day....pressure on the dog from the threat of a helper?  No.  But there is pressure on the dog.  It's just not the pressure of a threat.

I like grip sports, but cannot, and am not sure I ever WILL be able to afford training and titling in them....so I'll title my dogs out the yang in other areas.  My sports are no easier than yours, as much as you would like to believe they are.  When I run agility, and when I train, sometimes you have to put a lot of pressure on that dog to get things right, and other times you need to just step back and let the independence of that dog take hold, and trust your dog.

I can appreciate a hard dog....I've got one now.  Agility is a fun sport, but is not without it's dangers.  My male has a wicked prey drive, and when we started, he wanted to eat everybody that was running before him.  Took a lot of time, and I will admit some NASTY corrections that I didn't want to apply, but all he got out of it was "Oh!  I shouldn't do that! H'ok!"

I dealt with a bit of handler aggression...it was modified with more positive methods, because cranking him made him worse.  He could TAKE the correction, but it wasn't, at least in his head, a fair correction.  Tried a new method, he's just fine now.

I put pressure on my dogs in various ways, and I socialize in various ways, but I disagree that I should not breed a MACH,  HSAs UDX4, VST dog because I can't do the grip work with him.  I still keep in mind a versatile, stable, mentally and physically sound animal that is willing to work with his handler, is handler SENSIBLE (not sensitive, sensible), has good drives, and maintains a good on off switch.  I still keep in mind a dog that cannot handle a correction for mouthing the dumbbell, or a dog that needs harsher corrections too often.  I keep in mind the dog that says "Up yours!" to his handler because he "doesn't feel like working".  I keep in mind the dog that is too soft and shrinks because his handler raised her voice.

I don't want to be training a dog like that in my sports anymore than you would want to train a dog like that in grip work.  That's not a German Shepherd.  But not all of us can afford the long drives back and forth to a schutzhund club once a week for a 10 minute protection section.  And advanced herding?  Well, let me know when we've got more than Ulf Kintzel training for the HGH here in the states.

Grip sports are important to a degree, and they are fun, but they are not the be all end all of temperament testing for the German Shepherd Dog.  Maybe in your eyes, but I disagree.  I work just as hard with my dogs in multiple venues as you do with yours in ONE.

I need to create (believe it or not) just as hard a dog for the work I do as you do with yours. I need a nice deep nose for my tracking titles.  I need a biddable, enthusiastic, hard dog to make it through the higher levels of obedience and agility.  I need a dog with the mental stability to go from tearing around an agility ring like a lunatic, to the calmer atmosphere of the obedience ring.  And I sure as heck would run my dogs through the obedience and tracking titles that the SV offers, but the bite work just isn't an option.  I test my dogs, just in a different way.  You may not

I'm curious as to why any breeder would place such a dog in the hands of a novice handler and\or into pet homes. The breeder should know what type of dogs they are producing and then some chap comes to them and ask for the biggest, baddest dog available shouldn't it be the breeders responsablity to be placing the appropriate dog to the right client? Are they too blinded by the clients checkbook to know any better?

That's like somone walking into a gun store and asking to buy a .45 hand gun without ever shooting a pistol before and buying a big caliber hand gun. Then goes to the gun range and shoots it and realize it's too much of a gun for them.

djon vouvjic

Thank you for your comments, earlier today I tried to put down exactly what you have said but in the end I decided not to put it on line, as I was sure that I would have been put down for my comments.

As I wanted to say I see folk asking the question "which breeder should they deal with and what are good working lines and these are Novice owners and they have Never owned GSD's before but they are told to contact  #$@%% kennel and I shudder because I have read about these dogs and the lines the are from, they are hard working lines but they are being recommended for Novice handlers.

I own show line GSDs and at times I have a puppy that I would not sell to a Novice owner because I know that they would have trouble dealing with it.

Sueincc, you said:  I find it really funny that someone who has admittedly NEVER done any sort of grip work with dogs wants to tell others about working ability, or even attept to discuss dogs with "too much" any kind of drive - what  ridiculous arrogance!

Clearly grip work is IT for you... I want everything, I want the total dog, the one that works and is correctly constructed.  I guess it's your prerogative to settle for less.

On the Banderas du domaine du parc thread, your comment was: 

Why do you keep repeating this dog has a SchHII as if that is the end of the story?  We understand the dog has a schHII, but to those of us that understand the work, we need to see him work in order to determine whether or not he is a "superstar".   BTW, I mentioned it twice, when I thought it was relevant.

Yet, you say on this thread to Snajper:  Pretty arrogant to put yourself above the SV, at least in my opinion, but  thanks for the laugh.  

Seems pretty clear to me, that you're the one puting yourself above the SV... YOU need to see him work?  Now that is arrogance, albeit sadly misplaced.  As Snajper said, this thread was not about working v show.  Bancroft could possibly have worded it better at the outset, that would have precluded a few of us from posting... me included.

Gustav, you say: I don't equate structure and temperament in dogs just like I don't equate beauty and intelligence in people. In a perfect world it would be nice to have both, but in both cases the mind has to have a higher priority than the body. Why?? because an ugly dog can be a productive and functional dog for what the dog was made to do. Does the policeman, herder, blindmanSAR, people reject a good functional dog in their vocation because the structure isn't KKl....I think not, this is a showring attitude, period!.

I largely agree, however, why do people breed ugly (incorrectly constructed) dogs?  Because they can or because