Shawlein Fine Art & Purebred German Shepherd Dogs

2012/06/11
by Linda J Shaw
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The GSDCA in Trouble, part 3 That Dallas has been the most influential stud of the last 20 years is not an especially good thing. He seems to have been a very nice dog, and a welcome step away from the exaggerations of the last several decades, but he was still too long and too angulated to function as a full time working dog. I’ve read that he worked in “all three phases” of schutzhund, but did he achieve any titles? He himself was more of the same genetically – Lance, Lance, Lance – and he would have been unable to bring the hybrid vigour and genetic diversity that American lines so desperately need. The breed doesn’t need prettier show dogs. It needs stronger dogs – physically, constitutionally, structurally, mentally, immunologically and genetically.

Amidon blames handlers for the demise of interest in American style specialty shows. They haven’t helped. The specialty show has become a caricature. More importantly, handling show dogs doesn’t qualify someone to direct the genetics of a working breed. Remember Lamar Kuhns and his idiotic mantra of “all lines to Lance”? Kuhns was a genetic illiterate, but his idea has been pretty much achieved, to the breed’s detriment.

It’s not Lance’s fault. He appears to also have been a very nice dog, if untested and untitled. It wouldn’t have mattered how good he was. It is the level of inbreeding that the “fancy” has engaged in that has weakened the breed in North America.

Are breeders to blame? Of course. The stampede for National trophies bigger than their dogs was more compelling than producing solid, proven, performing dogs that could pass on the breed’s best attributes. Judges who rewarded ever greater exaggerations should have been sacked. Kennel clubs that couldn’t be bothered to ban inbreeding or the breeding of defective animals are no less to blame.

“New activities” aren’t going to renew interest in American specialty shows. That is missing the point. The shows aren’t important. Returning to the standard is. Unfortunately I don’t think anything will change under current governance. If they were going to uphold the Standard they would have done it by now. The old Baby Boomers who are obsessed with their extreme dogs will die off eventually, and younger people who still believe in the GSD as a great working breed will hopefully carry on. Whether they carry on with contemporary American bloodlines remains to be seen.

L. Shaw

2012/06/04
by Linda J Shaw
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The GSDCA in Trouble, part 2 I know from personal experience that the mental state of the American show GSD deteriorated to an alarming degree. I’m told things have improved, but how much? Moses, Amidon and Rinke all talk about the working ability of the breed, but agility, rally, obedience, “watching the kids” and weekend herding are not work. These fun activities are not objective tests of working temperament. Many breeders’ claims of “wonderful” temperament in their dogs are without objective evidence. A good GSD should demonstrate that it will, unaccompanied, hold its ground under threat, has the drive to persist on a difficult track, and the stability to withstand applied stress. Rinke says that taking the dog home off lead will show you its temperament, but that won’t show you working aptitudes unless you arrange for a capable tester to assess the dog.

There probably are no really strong American show line dogs. A dog that “shows you its molars” (a comment made by a well-known American show breeder about one of his well-used studs) in its own backyard is showing you nothing. American dogs are not objectively tested for stable defensive drive. Show judges are not able to judge temperament in a show ring except to cull the truly defective. Without working titles, working ability in a line degenerates. Rinke comments that, “There are good dogs that are doing protection, obedience, leader-dogs, guard-dogs, and family dogs. (What) I’m talking about (are) animals that are very close to the Standard – extraordinary specimens”. He seems to imply that the great American show dog is superior to the true working dog, and that the capabilities of a true working dog still exist in modern show lines, despite dozens of generations of untested, untitled and unqualified breeding. I’d be happy if they did, but there is no evidence that this is true, and much evidence that it is not.

Most American breeders of AKC show lines seem to have little experience of working dogs. They don’t differentiate between German show and German working lines, which are quite different. They appear not to understand bite work and the differences between drives and defense, or the importance of nervous stability and how it is tested. They seem to prefer to avoid the issue and produce soft, low drive dogs (drive and energy are two different things). Show breeding has become pet breeding. When I got into the breed over forty years ago, it was understood that the shepherd was not just an everyman’s pet. A shepherd required training, discipline and exercise, and was “more” dog than average. Show breeding has changed that.

None of these three breeders discuss the working dogs they bred or the dogs of their breeding that are guiding the blind, serving on SAR units or as police service dogs. Have any dogs of their breeding achieved advanced schutzhund titles, or even advanced tracking? Why are the Best in Shows and ROMs and Selects so much more important? They are to a conformation breeder. They are not to the breed.

To be continued…

2012/06/01
by Linda J Shaw
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The GSDCA in Trouble, part 1 There are three Interviews posted on the GSDCA site, with Jim Moses, Barbara Amidon and Dave Rinke, that make for interesting reading. What struck me was that the GSDCA appears to be dying, and they seem to have no idea why. Membership is dwindling, and entries for the national, futurity and maturity shows is shrinking even while American SV style shows, trials and clubs are becoming more popular. If the GSDCA was a company, I wouldn’t invest in it. All three seem cognizant of deep trouble but appear unable to identify why. And yet the answers are so obvious.

I’ve been going through Reviews and Red Books from the early 1980s through the 1990s, gathering references on structure. Prior to the 1980s the dogs were solid, balanced and without exaggeration. Pedigrees were relatively open, and the back ends of most were still anchored by schutzhund titles. But by the middle of the 1980s the tsunami of Lance genetics was well underway. While dogs with excellent, Lance-free pedigrees still existed, their lines were being swallowed up by Lance lines for no better reason than that breeders wanted to win in the conformation ring.

By the late 1980s and 90s, the pedigrees of so-called top dogs had reached a level of inbreeding that was disturbing, to say the least. At the same time, “top” dogs began dying prematurely of torsion, toxic gut and cardiomyopathy, while pancreatitis, esophageal problems, allergies and thyroid issues became more common. How coincidental do you suppose that was? I owned many American line dogs, almost all with health issues. After almost two decades I fled to German working lines and suddenly had healthy, long lived dogs. None of these three breeders even mention the genetic bottleneck into which American dogs have been levered. Rinke comments that breeding indiscriminately to the same dogs is reducing genetic diversity, but never suggests that the only real remedy is to breed out to unrelated (non-Lance) dogs. Simply trying to select against genetic problems while remaining within the same inbred gene pool is not going to repair the breed over the long term. I sometimes wonder if American breeders have any real understanding of the dangers of inbreeding. Certainly the wider public is learning fast.

With increased levels of inbreeding (breeders like to call it line-breeding, but that strikes me as disingenuous) physical type became increasingly strange. Some breeders delighted in advertising their dogs as extreme. Torsos, spines and chest cavities became abnormally elongated. Rear angulation became so unstable that the back legs could neither properly support the dog’s weight, nor generate the strength required to lift the dog into a period of suspension. Breeders who achieved gait with “long, smooth, elastic, close to the ground strides” sacrificed the period of suspension to get it. Such dogs show “movement” by racing around the ring with huge strides, high speed and no power. This may give the impression of spectacular side gait, but these dogs can’t gallop properly and they can’t jump. They can’t work. American breeders alone find this distortion to be attractive and desirable. The rest of the world sees it for what it is.

To be continued…

2012/04/22
by Linda J Shaw
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Finally spring is springing, and I am starting to get back into it. It has been a while since I have updated shawlein.com, and I appologize for that, but I have been somewhat immobilized since New Year’s. Ice on a stone walkway and a nasty tumble into a rockery and I have been forming a close relationship with my crutches for several months. Fortunately I have one dog who is a high speed, self propelled rocket with a large yard, and another dog who is happy sunbathing. However I am finally beginning to hobble about, and to start picking up where I left off after Christmas!

My internment was not entirely unproductive. I managed to complete a 78 page manuscript for a book I have been mulling over for some time: An Analysis of Canine Structure and Gait. That’s 78 pages without any illustrations; they are next on my to do list. Despite the differences between so many breeds, they are fundamentally alike. And they are nothing like horses. So much of what has been claimed for dogs has come from opinions about horses, and they are wrong, or at least irrelevant. I have a bit more research to do and then I am going to spend a month storming the illustrations. It is going to be fun.
L

2012/01/02
by Linda J Shaw
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The Back & Spine When I first look at a dog, the first thing I see is the spine. The topline is the upper surface of the dog that is visible to the eye, but the spine, or backbone, is what lies underneath the muscle and fur. I think of the spine as the cornerstone of the dog, the architecture that is the foundation of the dog’s structure. If it is normal, the rest can’t be too bad (according not to some show standard, but to nature’s requirement for how a dog should function). If the spine is not correct, whether too long or too short, swayed or roached, it can affect the proportions and function of the entire body.

In the German shepherd breed, roached backs are a problem, and have been for decades. It’s obvious from show critiques that many judges do not understand the anatomical structure of a roached back, and why it is wrong. Hundreds of roached dogs appear in breed magazines with critiques praising their strong backs. Recently a photo of a young dog made the rounds of the internet, with discussions about her topline. Some commentator suggested that, because her midback did not rise above her withers, her back was therefore not roached. She is a very nice female and I like her, but her spine is roached. This person could see only the visible back, which was not humped, but could not visualize the spine underneath, which was. It’s little wonder that curvature of the spine has become widespread.

Before you can visualize the spine though, you have to know what a spine looks like. Below I’ve attached six illustrations from the preeminent folio of studies of mammalian anatomy: An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists, by W. Ellenberger, H. Dittrich and H. Baum, originally published in 1901. The Canidae, or family of canines, is represented by a large central European “cur dog” very similar in structure to a wolf. The lion represents the family Felidae, the felines, which with the dog are dominant members of the order Carnivora. The horse represents the order Perissodactyla, the odd toed animals, while the ox, goat and deer represent the even toed. The predatory carnivores evolved for pursuit speed, while the hoofed prey animals evolved for escape speed. The goat specialized somewhat for agility and the ox for power. However, the most immediately interesting thing about them is how similar they are.

The Dog

The most important points to take away from these illustrations is how the longer thoracic spines of the withers give the topline a much different contour from the actual line of the spine. In all cases in an animal built to run, the vertebrae are strung in a virtually straight line from the base of the neck to the pelvis. In the predators, both of which show a double suspension gallop with huge flexion of the backbone, there is a very slight upward curvature of the spine, which is generally not visible particularly in a dog with a heavy coat. This cur dog is very close coated. In all cases the withers show a slope well differentiated from the slope of the back.

The Lion

Look at these studies carefully. Note that the “cur dog” was a nineteenth century animal produced without any influence of shows (dog shows as we know them did not exist in the mid-nineteenth century), or artificial breeding by man. He was just a common dog, and probably the product of generations of street and farm dogs. So it’s a pretty fair guess that this is the anatomy that nature confers on a large domestic dog when man does not interfere.

The Horse

In Part Two I will post drawings of the typical roach backed GSD, the kind that is regarded as having a good, strong back, as well as anatomical drawings of what the spine of a dog like this actually looks like under the fur and muscle.

The Ox (cow)

The Deer

The Goat

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