| Balance in the German Shepherd Dog There is an interesting article on Ed Frawley’s site (http://leerburg.com) written by Jean Mueller, “Balance Problems with the American Show German Shepherd”, concerning over-angulation and the American show type GSD. The article has been there a while. Ed’s is a good site, full of information for anyone interested in working dogs, and I highly recommend it. Jean’s is a good article, well written and on point. It’s illustrated with a photograph of a black and tan dog posing with his trophies, and labelled as a typical American show dog. Well enough, except that he’s a very balanced looking show dog. I’ve never been able to figure out why this particular dog was chosen to illustrate this article, because he is not really a typical AKC show type, at least not a typical specialty style dog, and he is not over angulated. In fact, he is a very beautiful, very correct dog, the type of dog that American show lines can produce when breeders know and care what they are doing, and judges know what they are looking at. He looks like a substantial, compact dog with a short, straight back, beautiful shoulder, high withers, decent croup and good rear angulation – not too much, not too little. His feet are good, his head looks nice, even his colour is attractive. I don’t know if he was a good dog or not (temperament, hips etc), but he certainly looks like a nicely constructed dog and using him as an example of extreme structure must be very confusing to anyone trying to learn about conformation. I know it’s probably not possible to use a photo of an extreme winning US show dog – the owners tend to object – so if Ed would like to use one of my drawings of an extreme dog that would really illustrate the article, I’d be happy to send him one. |
 Definitely NOT a typical American Specialty dog |
Balance in the German Shepherd Dog
2011/12/15