Junk it

The whole idea of breeds is silly. It is dog show stuff. It is belief inspired by purebred ideology.

Breed dogs for their use. Coat and size are a factor, but not breed.

Are your field bred working setters getting too inbred?
Why breed them to a bench setter?
Breed them to a field bred working pointer.

Do you hesitate because then the puppies would have no "purebred papers" and it would be easier to sell 1/2 working setter, 1/2 bench setter puppies, with papers, to the fools who would buy them, than to sell pure working field bred pointsetters?

1. Degree not pedigree.

Again it is working ability, health, and temperament!!! Degree not pedigree.

Do NOT let "looks" crepe into your posts.

Who, except dog show people, cares what the details of a dog are? Who cares what a German Shepherd Dog looks like vs what a Dobermann Pinscher looks like?

Make breeds by their profession!!

Make police dogs, military dogs, personal protection dogs, and shutzhund degreed dogs , all one breed.

Once the dog is two years old, can do the work, and is healthy, then he can trade his puppy papers for registration papers and can be bred.

Start the puppies in drill, obedience, scent matching, tracking, and other performance events to show that the dog is trainable, can work in public, and be around other dogs and still perform.

If one boxer X poodle can do the work, but one purebred German Shepherd Dog can not, then let the boxoodle win the event - that GSD doesn't deserve it.

Only if your GSDs PROVE that they can win over the other breeds, should they be placed above the other breeds - otherwise we are just talking about our dogs being better.

Forget that "silly show stuff". Looks don't matter. Color doesn't matter - so long as it is not linked to health problems.

What matters is the dog's degree, his training and work - not his pedigree or how pretty his photo is.

A GSD is NOT his photo, he is his abilities, which are proven through his performance.

Degree not pedigree.
thank you for reading:
http://thepdkc.blogspot.com/
permission to cross-post.

What we had.

This is an older type of German Shepherd Dog.

Breed Friends

This is an old style Doberman Pincher.


Notice how much she looks like the old style German Shepherd Dog?

Double or Nothing.

It is easy to say "Just spay/neuter your show shepherds, and then buy working shepherds that aren't so extreme", but show breeders breed to win, don't they? so the answer there is to change the judging - or just not have dog shows anymore, they are kind of silly, aren't they?

But many dog breeders, who have been at it for a long time, know their personal dog's ancestry like a soap opera fan knows the histories of the characters on their favorite soap opera.

It hurts these old timers to feel that their line of dogs, would come to an end, and not be bred anymore. Change is better than death, so maybe the answer is to outcross to Doberman Pinschers?

But to do that, the idea of "purebreds" has to go into the trash bin. Dog breeders need to understand how close "inbred" and "purebred" are, and to understand that neither needs to be their goal in breeding dogs - they can breed for genetic diversity, health, and temperament.

German Shepherd Dachshunds

There are some hybrid crossbreeds that make sense. But there are some that just don't do it for me.

What would you get if you crossed the most popular dog breed in Germany, the German Shepherd Dog, with one of the other popular dogs in that area, the Dachshund (teckel)?

If you crossed a German Shepherd Dog that looked like Rin Tin Tin with a teckel, after back-crossing to the German Shepherd Dog, would you get a dog that looks like a modern American show type shepherd?

Masson & retrieverman

Have you had time to think about the colors over in the post on retrieverman about early German Shepherd Dogs?

Black, Grizzle, and reddish brown (solid colored or "with tan") and
WHITE, white with patches of color, brindle (with or without "tan markings").

NOT LISTED: sable, saddleback, mantle coated.

What is listed, can you see them one by one in your mind's eye?

Can you write out the alleles?

Today, German Shepherd Dogs can be black, but I am told that it usually a recessive black.

So we have:
1. solid black
2. solid white
3. solid reddish brown
4. 'solid' grizzle

5. black with tan markings
6. grizzle with tan markings
7. reddish brown with tan markings

8. white with large patches of color
9. white with large patches of color, and tan markings
10. "white" with tan markings,

11. brindle
12. brindle with tan (just writing what it says - he might mean brindle long mantle and tan markings? a black and tan with brindle? - but I have seen dogs with both black & tan and tan markings, and the only brindle was in the tan markings. Merle will just work on the black mantle. Does Masson include Merle with brindle? Maybe this is something unique to breeds that I don't know well?)

I don't claim to be into color - it seems to be the craze - but not my thing. I have a simple answer: so long as the color doesn't hurt or disadvantage the dog, whatever the color is, is okay with me.

But this is a bit of a different case. This is really about: What happened to the German Shepherd Dog?

I do NOT know about the inheritance of grizzle - so I am going to leave that out, there is plenty to chew on without it.

We have tan markings on: black, reddish brown, (grizzle), "white", white piebald, and brindle. Masson mentions it twice, once as "with tan" and once as "tan markings".

So what colors and patterns do we have?

OT History Tells

I once asked a history major why anyone would write a NEW history book? - why not just reprint the old history books? - it's not like history has changed any. His reply was one of my few personal favorites, to quote:

"They buy new history books all the time. When a new administration gets in power, they want the books to tell their point of view. ------- work to get into power just so they can change the books. Right now there are people re-writing text books in case ------ gets elected, then they can sell the system books that agree with his point of view." (I quoted it the best that I remember but who remembers perfectly? I left out names.)

At that point, I decided that HE KNEW HISTORY. Takes something special to impress me, that was it. He understood the context that the SUBJECT of history comes from.

My take on history is that it is often fantasy for people who hate fantasy.

But it is made up by people who not only like fantasy - they spin it themselves.

If you read the book "Please Understand Me" (Briggs-Myer personality quiz) you will remember the iNtuitive/Sensible split.

Intuitives like fantasy; Sensibles do not - unless iNtuitives tell them that it non-fiction.

I think history is fantasy for people who don't like fantasy.

I have these categories of history:

1. Personal History - I was there, I heard it, or read the news, or saw it at the time it happened - before it could be re-done into "historical fact".

2. His-story, Her-story, Their-story: - somebody alive at the time it happened, told me what they heard or saw.

3. Hear say: somebody heard it and re-said it, someone else heard & said, an so on until it reached me, but it happened in the lifetime of people who are still alive now.

4. It happened before anyone alive now was born.

And older than that? How do you erase something written in stone? I saw on TV about how:

The ancient Egyptians wrote about their Pharaoh, and they craved statues. Other Pharaohs came along, and changed the names on the writings, and de-faced the statues of people they didn't like.

Irish Setters with no red hairs.

Just as adults often go for the unusual, children very very often will ignore the normal puppies in a litter and only play with the odd colored puppy or kitten.

This is because children have a very hard time learning to distinguish between one puppy and another. Children often look at patched colored puppies and just see them as a bunch of patched colored puppies - they don't remember the shapes of the patches.

Even if you say "The puppy's name a pupy after his markings, the child wont recognise the puppy when they see the other side of the puppy. And most children lack the patience to stand there and wait and look - they just want to run up and grab a puppy.

It is the same with kittens. I knew people who bred purebred cats, the children got use to there always being kittens around - but then, one of the kittens was born an off color (for that breed of cat) and the kids adored it. Why? Because they could recognise it from the other kittens.

The reverse happens in laboratories. The company deliberately uses mice, rats, guinea pigs, and rabbits that are all the same color albino. Because if the animals were distinctive then the experimenters would identify with the animals as individuals and the experimenters would feel sorry for a favored animal.

I knew of a litter of kittens where all the kittens were the same color but one. The children played most with the one different kitten - the other kittens had names - but which name went to which kitten? Only the odd colored kitten could be properly labeled.

The boy in this family was cruel and he would pick on the kittens who look alike. Worse, in my opinion is when you find a child who seeks out the unique puppy or kitten t pick on.

The unique or identifiable animal is one that the child can have a personal bond with. The other animals, like flocks of purebred chickens, or kennels of many purebred dogs and cats, are too similar for a child (and often adults) to tell apart.

Seeking out, and favoring, the distinctive animal is normal. Being more able to harm an animal when they all look alike is more normal. But hurting, especially seeking out to hurt, an identifiable animal is not a good moral sign.

Why some people want to breed dogs and cats to get groups where they all look so such alike, I don't know.

German Shepherd Dogs

Over on retrieverman today, he did a very good post on the early German Shepherd dogs. According to the text he quotes, the early German Shepherd Dogs could be:

Black, reddish brown, grizzle, or brindle (solid colored or with tan),
White, or white with patches of color.

What have we got here in genes?

Today's German Shepherds come in tan with black saddle or black mantle (and other colors), so the "with tan" must mean the the author is not being very specific and is clumping both of those patterns into "with tan" along with the usual "with tan",

which make me guess that some of the other color descriptions might be parent categories, not specifics -

unless German Shepherd Dogs back then did not come in both saddle/mantle AND tan points -

and since "with tan" would more imply tan points, that would be saying that the most common color in German Shepherd Dogs today (the tan with black saddle/mantle) was NOT an original breed color - it was not even listed!

That would be like IF today's German Shepherd Dogs were usually all white, but white was NOT an original color -

but wait, white IS listed as an original color - but saddle/mantle is NOT!

Could it be that breeders have been breeding what was the rejected color?

Not only that, but that they have rejected most of the original colors, in favor of a rare breed color?

Thanks for reading:
http://thepdkc.blogspot.com/

and if you want to read the post that I am commenting on, it is:
http://retrieverman.wordpress.com/

more on "Masson and retrieverman" post, here.

permission to cross post.