Well Bred vs Backyard Bred - Page 10

Yeah, the army wouldn't let me keep one in the barracks so I had to go back for a couple of years after I got out. 

I just stayed in......went back 2 more times.....9 years over there. Germersheim/Landau/Kitzigen/Todendorf/Graf/Fulda
Awesome people.....great food.....beautiful country.....FANtastic dogs.....trainers!
back to the shadows.....LOL

"i have said before there are diamonds in the ruff. but do you have an example of a showline dog on active duty or retired that possesses the physical and mental capability to perform his or her job? One that is in a role/outfit that put a lot of demand on the dog day in and day out. What was this dogs shelf life for active service as well?"

Yoshy,
yoshy -
http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/616556.html 
Prison guard and riot control from show lines.

he looks like a nice dog. how long has he been in service?

we have 1, any more anyone knows of?

also his sire was a 2x wusv according to pdb.

anymore?

Maybe I live on a different planet........... I will have to check if the SchH routine is different for an WL or an SL, if so, I must have slept a long time. Keith, thanks for your posts, head on, as always. Max, you were stationed in Landau, that is just around the corner from me. If you ever make a sentimental visit, dont forgett to ring me up, I'll buy you a beer !

To sum it all up, basicly it is the all time favorite ...... WL are the better workers, SL definetly look better !! You guys are halerious ! Ther is crap and BS everywhere, I have seen WL fail so miserably, that it did physicly hurt, and that is not because the dog having a bad trainer, just weak dogs. Have seen SL doing the same thing. Have also seen SL work sheep all day long, when the herder loaded the WL on the cart, because he was pooped ! Shit happens, you guys need to relax. OH, WL are more healthy, what a crap, the WL breeder just let the weak ones fall from the face of this planet earlier, and you never hear about it again. Not a big problem for me, just dont tell me they only produce healthy and mentally stable dogs, that is as much ballony as it would be, if a SL breeder states that.

SSDD

With all due respect
Ulli

Ok, lets try this and see if it makes things a little clearer about what is being said here. Since breeding black dogs for color only was brought up earlier we'll use that color as a reference ,although any color will suffice in this situation. Lets breed the solid black dog to a solid black bitch for the next 30 or 40 years with our goal being to produce a line of black dogs with no exceptions. We have to isolate and cull any dogs in our program that produce any color other then black. I believe this would have to be considered narrowing our gene pool considerably. Lets take it to the next step, lets breed a dog that has a certain conformaton, in this case a percieved conformation that is in fact abnormal in the eyes of many. Be that as it may, we like this conformation and we breed for it anyway. At this point we have to isolate and cull again to achieve our goal.Obviously we have again narrowed our gene pool.Well we've made some real progress here and now have a line of dogs that meet our expectations in both color and conformation,now our only challenge is to preserve what we have accomplished.We certainly can't gamble at his point so we have to narrow our gene pool a little more,we have to breed the dogs in our program that reproduce themselves. So it looks like once again we have to narrow our gene pool.It is highly likely that we have created some problems for ourselves by this time  since we concentrated our efforts on color and conformation and not the overall dog.We have multiplied any and all underlying problems in our breedings because that was not our main focus. We are now 30 or 40 years down the road with our breeding program producing nothing but black dogs that fit our idea of perfect conformation.Make your own assumptions as to what  you think was accomplished here and what these dogs are really good for. The big picture for me is dogs that are black and fit the idea of conformation in the minds of those that bred them, with little to no concern about what was lost along the way.
As has been stated time and time again in this thread there are exceptions, we've all seen showline dogs that can do the work and do it well but not in the % that they should be.It should also be evident to anyone breeding for any length of time that there can and will be underlying health problems for any line of dogs bred in this manner.The same can be said of working line dogs if breeding singles out a particular coat color and one trait in particular ignoring everything else. I will now depart from this thread with no other comments on this subject. Form your own opinions from what I have written.                                                      Michael

Ulli.....Thank you! I may just take you up on that Beer! I would love to go back and see what is left from the old Nike Hercules Site, just outside of Landau. I got involved with the GSD while working there, but living in Germersheim. The hundesplatz in Germersheim where I met Herr Emil Holzman. He got me my first German...German Shepherd....I brought over my American German Shepherd when I found housing in Germersheim. That was back in 1978. Emil also used to take me over to Mothern ,France to watch their dogs work and trial....those were great times. I'll drop you a e-mail, would like to speak with you about a Pup.

Thanks again for the offer of a great German Beer!
Going to check out your web site now....

Michael, most of what you've said is true but it once again assumes that a) there was a very limited gene pool to begin with which isn't the case; and b) that dogs are being bred for only this trait at the exclusion of all others.  If the dogs bred in your example have all of the requisite characteristics and there are lots of black ones from which to choose, the argument doesn't work any more.

"It should also be evident to anyone breeding for any length of time that there can and will be underlying health problems for any line of dogs bred in this manner."

Here is where you're wrong.  There have either always been underlying health problems or there haven't been; genetic flaws to not spontaneously generate themselves.  If a group of dogs has no genes for a given trait, that trait will neverappear (except for possibly in the case of a chromosome anomaly which would be limited to the individual) despite how closely they are inbred or linebred, how often or for how long. 

Keith, We'll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.This could go on forever and neither of us will benefit from it. I wish you the best of luck in life and with your dogs.               Michael

And I you, Michael.

I would, however, be interested on your perspective as it relates to the effects of the isolation of lines of dogs in eastern bloc countries prior to 1989.  Did it improve or hinder those dogs and inasmuch as they weren't exposed to fully half of the breed's evolution during that time, can they really even be considered the same breed?