Quote:
Originally Posted by AbbyK9
The thing that really bothers me about this thread is that someone early on in the thread said that people remember Strongheart and Rin-Tin-Tin, and that's the type of dog they want to buy. I don't understand this as an explanation because neither Strongheart nor the original Rin-Tin-Tin look anything at all like these dogs that are being advertised as "old-fashioned" German Shepherds.
Below are two photos. The one on the left is Strongheart, and one on the right is the original Rin-Tin-Tin. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see oversized, hulking behemoths of dogs when I look at Rinty and Strongheart.
As far as the breed standard goes ... people like to use the excuse that the modern breed standard was written much later and breeders *should* be breeding to what Max von Stephanitz envisioned. Unfortunately, it seems like those people generally have NO IDEA what Max von Stephanitz envisioned. Especially if they say that and breed oversized dogs. Because Captain Max was quite clear what he wanted -
If you're breeding neither to the standard nor to what the breed's founder envisioned, exactly what are you breeding? Because IMHO it's not a German Shepherd.
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As I stated earlier, I define "old-fashion" German shepherds as pre- Klodo v Boxberg. With this in mind, let's look at the historical trends in size of the German shepherd. From my historical notes - "As for size, Stephanitz himself chose, at the very least, 2 Siegers of at least 27 inches in height between 1910 and 1920 and uses Jung Tell of the Kriminalpolizei (Champion of Holland in 1913), another large dog, in a photograph as an example of a correct dog. The Boll lines, the Kriminalpolizei, the Secretainerie lines were all tall, large dogs, well known and well regarded in their time. In the early twenties, with dogs like Norse of the Kriminalpolizei (29 inches) being so heavily used, (180 litters were recorded from Norse alone) Stephanitz, who had choosen taller, larger dogs in the past, deliberately chose Klodo of Boxberg, a small (24 inches) but very correct dog as Sieger in 1925, knowing people would turn to Klodo to breed and that would inevitably bring the dogs
back to the middle ground. Choosing the Klodo son von Haus Schutting in 1929 to follow merely soldified that modification. Stephanitz knew that he could depend upon people breeding heavily to whatever dog he chose as Sieger, and he was right, they did, but
their is no doubt that historically, the early breeders of the German shepherd preferred dogs of larger size to those of smaller stature. Early American breeders were no different, preferring dogs of larger size over those of smaller stature.
To say the German shepherd dog was never a large dog is historically wrong.