German Shepherd / Crufts Showing

Sorry I missed your answer before

First You said that you checked all the info on your breeds hips
That is great
and yup health testing is good - for the things you test for
If you breed for hips it is most likely you will get better hips - BUT the question was are the dogs healther?? all you can say is they have better hips or better what you are checking for
are they each and every generation living longer and healthier lives? are they genetically deverse enough that there are no time bombs waiting to happen


as for the thickness of the hips - I simply said it is WORSE in the American types - not that it dosent exist in the other show lines
and I dont recal this thread being 'German line GSD's'

Yes its just 6 dogs - but I have seen thousands of dogs of many many breeds and I only once saw a dog so weak in his hocks like that - and he was a severly neglected cruelty case - and after a couple of months of good food and gentle exercise he was walking strongly again

and 'just 6' but who bred them?? someone is producing them - and people are proud enough to be trying to show them

Thankyou for answering

I have only once seen a puppy wabble like that in the flesh - and it was a show GSD puppy
The working GSD puppies I have met dont do that
and no other puppies do that - when I got Ben at under 8 weeks old his hocks didnt wobble
WHY do show GSD's have such a weakness there

But the 'cow hocked' is not just in the puppies - in the crufts video moobi put up both the dogs were clearly cow hocked when standing (or loose hocked or whatever)
why should GSD's from show lines need to have such a weakness in their back ends that no other breed seems to have
and why is it considered normal?

They do it in most of the clips you see of show GSD's
from the PDE clip I took this screenshot


and the clip dawn put up


as a comparison you can see this dutch shepard doing the same type of thing and he always stays on his toes, dosent go back onto his hocks

I really don't know anything about GSDs, but can someone please explain to me why the police GSDs have a straight back and look like normal dogs?

Nearly all the police dogs in the UK are now from European VPG lines so they will not have the straight/level toplines so beloved of Joe Public, they have a marked wither & a topline that slopes from withers to tailset to ensur that when the dog is working it isn't expending excessive energy because it is falling on forehand & can cover the maximum distance with each trotting stride.

Dogs that have straight/level toplines like Labradors cannot cover anywhere near the same amount of distance as a GSD.

The GSD is a trotting breed, which means that it should be able to trot for long distances & over extended times. They, when working stock, are left to "patrol"a line over which the stock isn't to graze during daylight hours. A short stepping level/stright toplined dog cannot do this.

:? a csv can and has a straight topline

I think what is being confused here is the extent of the slope and the construction of the hind legs

after the very good article Moobli posted in a thread a few weeks back (which I will try and dig out again) I understand about the trotting
Which requires a tilted pelvis compared to many breeds
Which does give them a kind of 'tucked over bum' sort of look
http://www.sarjettegsd.webs.com/breedstandard.htm
as in the chart above

BUT
In many show dogs this has gone to extream which means that the dogs back feet when reaching forwards are going so far that their hocks touch the floor
as the feet try and push back below the hips they are still at such an angle that the actual power from their legs cannot be utalised to push the dogs forwards and so the front end has to compensate - resulting in a dog much stronger at the front than the back
The hocks also have to be loose and wabble out or inwards because otherwise with the length of the legs when the paw goes below the hip the hip would have to rise - but the legs are not strong enough to lift the hip - so we have been breeding dogs with loose hocks to alow them to wobble to the side so in profile the movement almost looks like what is wanted

This is not a case of them over doing the show stance - if you watch dogs like this moving they assume this position naturally because it is 'correct' for them due to the angles and length of bone they have been bred for -

What about all the other breeds that are required to trot/run over extended periods of time, yet do not have a sloping back? I really don't understand this logic. Not having a sloping back doesn't seem to affect the stamina and endurance of other breeds.

i was trying to find a pic i had of a csv with the angles drawn in like on the gsd link but i cant :-(

they are designed(for want of a better word) to 'trot' and are an endurance dog (they were border patrols)

HINDQUARTERSPowerful. The hind legs stand parallel. An imaginary vertical line drawn from the point of the ischium, would run midway through the hock joint. Dew-claws not desirable and should be removed.Upper thigh: Long, well muscled. Forms an angle of 80 degrees to the pelvis. The hip joint is sturdy and flexible.Knee: Strong, flexible.Lower thigh: Long, clean, well muscled. Forms an angle of about 130 degrees with the metatarsus.Hock joint: Clean, solid, flexible.Hocks: Long, clean. Position almost vertical to the ground.Hind feet: Longish, arched toes with strong dark nails. Well defined pads.
MOVEMENTHarmonious, light footed, ground covering trot in which the limbs skim over the ground as closely as possible. Head and neck incline to the horizontal. Pacing when walking.

.Back: Firm and straight

Oh dear! I am really glad I owned my GSDs before there was all this kerfuffle about them! This beautiful puppy ... an Oldway



turned into this beautiful dog ...



Had her mum too.

Her 3gen pedigree includes quite a few champions, show and obedience, Archduke of Baileyhill, Ferdl v.d. Eschbacher Klippen, Empress of Baileyhill,
Emmagen Simmin of Uffcott. Not a slopey back among 'em!

I've been looking over some old 'doggy' stuff and found this old description of the breed 'Alsatian (GSD)' as they used to be called in years past. If you can read this one you will see it says you could stand a glass of water on their back and it would not spill as they moved.

This Police German Shepherd is standing on its toes, not it's hocks, doing it's sleeve/bite work:

North Yorkshire Police Dog Training

Another Police dog doing bite work standing up on his toes:

Police dog bite training

This police GSD is standing not pulling and biting but he is clearly standing up on high pasterns that are perpendicular to the ground:

Working police dog standing on hind legs

BSDs do a very similar job to GSDs, and are noted for their stamina, but they are another working breed that do not have the sloping topline and the, imo and to my taste, overly "crouched" rear end either.

Come to that working freighting huskies (as opposed to racing sled dogs) tirelessly trot for miles, with the added burden of pulling a weight, without appearing to be in any way being disadvantaged by not having a sloping topline or overly lowered hocks in action.

Yes very true
I wonder where the idea came from, I have a feeling it is one of those things that someone had the idea that the dog would be able to do its job better like that and so they bred the dogs like that
rather than the shape evolving by selecting the dogs who naturally had the most stamina

A wolf can cover vast distances for hours on end without the need to have a back end like a GSD

Has there been any studies done that prove the saggy bumed show dogs are more efficient at their job and have more stamina than the less exadurated police dogs, or the dogs of the past, or the 'badly bred' GSD's or other similarly sized breeds?

Sadly it is looking like in many breeds there are things passed on that people repeate with no proof that they were every actually true
The people who show American GSD's would argue just as loudly that their dogs were the correct ones

For example the excuses for the exaggerated features of the bulldog are claimed to be to enable it to better bait bulls but the earlier dogs that DID bait bulls didn't have these features that have become exaggerated since the fitness for function of it as a bull baiting dog was no longer put to the test.

Similarly with the Basset and the Bloodhound.The function is the excuse for the exaggerations (big ears, lots of loose skin on the face, loose, wet, slack saggy jowls to all capture scent) but the working forms of these breeds are not so exaggerated, which seems to rather disprove the claims :? :?

I know these working dogs follow their nose rather than their eyes but it does help if they can see clearly to safely negotiate the terrain they must traverse while following the scent!

Exactly what I was thinking! but they would argue that their basset/bloodhound/bulldog are more correct cos they fit the standard - forgetting that they wrote the standard as well so it is as flawed as the person who made it

For those who are unaware, there are plenty of police dogs that are from "saggy bummed" show stock.

Just watch the tv programmes.......

Funny, but it does not appear to impair them going over walls, fences or running after crims....................

Until very recently they did not.

It is with the advent of the pet passport scheme which has meant easier access to breeding stock and purchasing of working line GSD which has resulted in a large change in many, not all police forces dogs.

Many forces still rely on gift dogs or those from rescue; others have their own breeding programmes or buy from specialist suppliers or import dogs.

So there are still plenty of GSDs which would offend they eye of many........

what nonsense - the BSD was bred for EXACTLY the same purpose and looks like the original GSD did - with moderate rear angulation and a LEVEL topline

This doesn't make any sense. The GSD was originally bred specifically for the job, but originally didn't have the sloping back we see today so how can today's sloping backed dogs be more fit for it's original function than the original ones?

I can't see how we can compare the video freeze of Elmo doing bitework to the other pics of dogs doing same
None of the others posted have the same body position - Elmo is pulling downwards, hence almost sitting down and the guy is leaning right over him.
Dunno, maybe it's just me, I just can't see the comparison.

The video from PDE totally disgusts me but thankfully dogs like that are not as common as they are being made out to be. How on earth someone thought those poor dogs were show material is beyond me

:?

Since having the conversations on here I have found out that Zak's greatgreatgrandmother (4th generation) was 80% thereabouts showline from the early 1980's when the dogs had firmer musculature and were nothing like as extreme as the modern showlines, all the rest are working line.

Apparently back in the 1970's and early 80's working line breeders in Germany and Belgium would occasionally bring in a showline dog as the split was not the chasm it is now, and that was most likely to keep the size up.

This is one of the questions that interests me too.