I guess the answer to Trudy is....the show ring is about the worst thing that can happen to any breed. Used to be that judge had the pedigree because, in Germany, he was there to guide the breeders and steer the breed in the right direction. Now, maybe that pedigree is more a political guide. The whole thing has been turned on it's head because people seem to get stuck on appearances. They want things to look a certain way when the reality is a completely different story. It is the same in SchH now where dogs "look" like they will protect when they won't at all. It's the Hollywood factor I guess.
I am not so sure WL breeders will be able to claim dominance in the temperament category much longer. Sure, that has been the case for years but times are changing . As I have said before, but will repeat anyway, many have not seen a GSD that is really displaying proper temperament. In reality, I think those dogs were never a dime a dozen but they are much less common nowadays. As usual, the culprit is nerve strength . There is simply a lack of courage in many of the dogs now. Yes, even the WLs. The compensating factor for WLs is drive . Not going to talk about that again but I think overall, many people are kind of blinded by their allegiance to certain bloodlines. Everything nowadays seems to be about splitting everything and everyone into conflicting camps. Not sure that's going to change, works too well for people who have something to sell and I am not just talking about dog people.
Since I have boarding and training kennel here and see lots of GSDs, I can say I have seen good dogs from all lines. Many of those better dogs were bred by the dreaded "BYB" . The German show dogs of years past, ( 1980 on), were not bad dogs, although there was always a little something missing but there was less missing than there is nowadays, that's for sure. The American line dogs that I have seen, ( I have not seen many lately though), were usually protective but lacked the nerve to back it up. When I say protective, I mean protective. Not protective like SchH people think of it where is is more about chasing, ( which IMO is not correct). Still, the ASL dogs were very loyal dogs to their owners and many that I have helped train were quite good in obedience because of that loyalty and pack drive. Of course, there were others who were completely unstable.
The German Show line dogs have gone thru many changes in the last thirty years. I remember them as being more like WLs but some were REALLY tough to train. A weird level of hardness, (or maybe resistance is a better way to put it), in those old SL dogs where they would simply not respond to corrections. That behavior some years later then morphed into a situation where they would shut down completely with a correction. Same refusal to comply but now mixed in with something else that made training them simply unpleasant. At the same time, in protection, during the late 80s early 90s, they were mostly lacking any kind of aggression or fight drive. They could only seem to manage training that involved lots of prey work but they didn't show a lot of heart...didn't care enough about the sleeve to fight for it and certainly not enough to fight the man. Made training them very difficult. Now, I am seeing more with aggression, ( but it is not a protective instinct I am seeing), but the nerves are not there to support it and the courage is lacking. We will see how the breeders go about fixing that, ( if they even care to), because for all the lines, as I have said before, nerve strength is the issue. Where people are going to go to compensate, I don't know. Many are too fixated on achieving certain goals and that works against repairing the problems.
The WLs have changed quite a bit as well. Especially in the last ten years. Nerves are sufficient for the type of "testing" that is going on now but maybe not strong enough for working in a way that involves aggression or enough to support a real protective instinct. It is one thing to have a dog who is crazy for a ball or the sleeve be less stellar in the nerve dept, ( although you will still see the result of that), but when you add lines known for aggression to lines with less than strong nerves, look out. That's when things get dangerous and IMO, is a place we are at headed with the WLs. No, not all of them, of course not. But there is a shift happening because people now want the dogs to bark in protection vs what has been going on the last ten years with silent guarding. They are going to lines that bark better but maybe not recognizing what is fueling that barking. There are very good dogs who bark but there are dogs who bark for "other " reasons. We also still have the screamers in the WLs. I think the dogs with Fero in there need a certain kind of breeding partner. There are certainly lines I would avoid mixing with that but I do see lots of people breeding combinations that make me wonder what they are thinking. So, we will see where that leads.
Oh and about the Police. You have to consider that about 97% of the dogs in Germany are show line dogs.
