[MaggieRoseLee]

Starts on page 32 and a great article. He's not happy with what's going on in the breed either! Neat comparison cause he's been with the breed so long to. Goes into the fact that Rally and Agility have huge entries so it's the breed ring where things need to be worked out.

Interview with James (Jim) Moses in the June 2010 Review

Seems like a good time for people to join the club and have a voice!

 

[Samba]

I read also and thought it was an informative and extensive discussion.

 

[Samba]

Here is another interesting read. It an interview with judge Dave Rinke.
Interview with Dave Rinke February 2010 Review

I too have noticed a possible bottleneck developing when I look at show dog pedigrees today.

 

[MaggieRoseLee]

Here is another interesting read. It an interview with judge Dave Rinke.
Interview with Dave Rinke February 2010 Review

I too have noticed a possible bottleneck developing when I look at show dog pedigrees today.

Some good quotes:

Temperament in the German Shepherd Dog

The number one thing with this breed is a good temperament and it’s still a problem in the breed today. Just because the dog is a champion, doesn’t mean it has good temperament. It just means someone trained it to stand or that they showed it a lot of times and it stood half the time they showed it.

I’m always amazed that people know the spook champions in the breed and breed to them anyway. I can’t believe that anyone would purposely do that. There is still great need for improvement. We need to seriously select the males and bitches we use for breeding and seriously select what we keep. It's still about the standard.

I’m sure I’ve put up dogs with less than desirable temperament - spooks. There’s no doubt. I’ve judged a lot of dogs and have about two and a half minutes to examine the dog. Do I really know if it has good temperament? No. I know if it leaks on my feet. I know if it bites me. I’ve had some of them look me in the eyes and some eyes are glazed over or they’re double-handled to the extreme. How can you tell in such a short time? The only way you really know if the dog has great temperament is to take it home for a week and take it off lead.

Genetic Issues Then and Now

The genetic problems in the breed today are pretty much the same as the ones we had before. We’re still dinking around with missing teeth. We got a much better dog once we tightened up the Standard. When I first got into the breed, both temperament and teeth weren’t that big an issue. If you could hold the dog so it couldn’t move, that was good enough and if it was missing two or three teeth, that really didn’t matter.

Today we have a hidden problem in that we’re not showing the dogs with missing teeth, but there are a lot of missing teeth in our limited genetic pool and the limited number of litters being breed. We’ve gone from 1,200 litters being futurity nominated to around 400. That’s created a challenge. Our genetic diversity is slowly being wiped out when everybody breeds indiscriminately to the same dog(s) without physically compensating for their challenges as detailed in the Standard.

We’ve had toxic gut, bloat, and spinal myelopathy in the breed for ages. We need to select against them all the time. What do I mean by selection? If you want to fix the affected dogs and keep them as pets, that’s fine, but get them out of the breeding population. Don’t rationalize bad temperament. Don’t rationalize genetic problems. Don’t fix it and breed it. Select against them any way that you want but get them out of the gene pool. DO NOT breed them. Always move up to quality. Like truly begets like.

 

[MaggieRoseLee]

Here is another interesting read. It an interview with judge Dave Rinke.
Interview with Dave Rinke February 2010 Review

I too have noticed a possible bottleneck developing when I look at show dog pedigrees today.

This is also great info:

What do we need to improve in the breed?

Temperament; temperament; temperament. We need to improve type and work on size a little bit but that’s the least of our challenges. People who buy a German Shepherd Dog want a handsome dog with a nice head, bone, feet, and coat.. People like coated puppies and there isn’t anything wrong with that since they make good working dogs.

We still have problems with fronts where there is a preponderance of short upper arms and short croups that give them a balanced-restricted gait which is certainly better than the over-angulated, unbalanced, pastern-flipping, toe-dragging, dead-tailed dogs that are far off the Standard.

We still have a challenge with rear ends. Some of the Specials can get up under themselves but they don’t follow through correctly. Some can’t get up under themselves and kick up.

When I looked at the tapes of the class animals at the 2009 Nationals, I thought there were a lot of class animals with serious rear challenges that need to be selected against dramatically and drastically – now. Much better to have under-angulated, functional working dogs than to have over-angulated, flashy “show dogs.” (MaggieRoseLee enlarged and blued that paragraph!)

We have a lot of ugly animals compared to the German dogs. Close coats, weak pigment, snipey snoots, and weak underjaws. We also need to be aware of the teeth in the animals; they need to have size and substance, not dinky, pointed teeth with spaces between them. We need to select for correct and complete dentition.

We shouldn’t have dogs that are so long with dips in the back. There is a caution there, however, because if they become too short, they will lose the beautiful, flowing side gait that should be characteristic of this breed. That is why the standard is 10 to 8 1/2 The one thing that makes the GSD unique is it’s ability to cover an immense amount of ground with a smooth, elastic gait.