Xeph
Posted : 12/28/2006 5:34:16 PM
So, historically, did they consider the dog valuable only as a companion?
They weren't valuable at all. When the breed warden's came around, if there were white pupies, they were culled. Drowned, bludgeoned, what have you. White has basically been eradicated in the german lines. Heck, sable is the DOMINANT color in the GSD, but finding a sable West German showline dog is quite the feat. Finding a showline black is just as difficult. Look at the West German winners...all black and red/tan.
And it is not the AKC that accepts colors. It is the parent club. Also, that slope you refer to in the Am GSD, is supposed to be there. It's supposed to be there in both lines. The German and American standards are similar, but not the same (which bugs me).
The AKC and SV standard call for a 90 degree angle of the shoulder. The AKC penalizes anything more than that, the SV standard allows up to 110 degrees in the shoulder angle, though it is considered faulty. It is not as heavily penalized as in the American Standard.
The SV standard calls for 22 degrees of angulation in the pasterns, while AKC calls for 25 degrees of angulation. Not much of a difference in writing, but a big enough difference to see it in the dogs.
AKC Standard calls for a 90 degree angle of angulation in the rear (as close to as possible). SV says that seen from the rear, the upper and lower thighs should be approximately the same length and an angle of 120 degrees.
SV Standard:
The top line extends from the point where the neck meets the skull past the well developed withers and the gently downward sloping back to the slightly sloping croup without a visible break. The back is firm, strong, and well muscled. The loin is broad, well developed, and strongly muscled. The croup should be long and have a slight downward slope (approximately 23 degrees from horizontal) and should merge smoothly into the tail set.
AKC Standard: The neck is strong and muscular, clean-cut and relatively long, proportionate in size to the head, and without loose folds of skin. When the dog is at attention or excited, the head is raised and the neck carried high; otherwise, typical carriage of the head is forward rather than up, but a little higher than the top of the shoulders, particularly in motion.
Topline: The withers are higher than and sloping into the level back. The back is straight, very strongly developed without sag or roach, and relatively short.
The whole structure of the body gives an impression of depth and solidity without bulkiness.
Croup long and gradually sloping.
As for Geneva...I've met her. She does NOT walk on her hocks, though she can stand on them. I can honestly say, that's just stretching, and training the muscles to be able to stretch that far. She's also considered moderate for the GSD, and the specialty dogs are much much more extreme that she is.
Strauss is a moderate dog...but I can make it so his hock lays flat on the ground. That's from 2.5 years of stretching his muscles so he can stack like that. He can do it facing to one side, but not the other, and that's because you consistently stack a dog facing one direction. If you showed dogs either direction, he could do it with the other leg. I can also make his topline look extreme when I stack him, even though he's not extremely angulated
I can get his hock to lay even flatter than that
And I can make his backside drop. Also notice how his forward foot doesn't reach as far forward as in the picture above. It's because he can't...I never worked that side to train his muscles to stretch on that side, because dogs are shown gaiting counter clockwise, and thus, the foot that is forward in this picture, is usually the foot that's back.
Each line has it's issues...the American dog with it's extreme rear and lack of brains, the West German with it's roached back and straight shoulder, and the East German/Czech/DDR which lacks any real angulation at all. They're all detrimental to the dogs in one way or another
I agree that Hatter was gorgeous...in fact, look at my Avatar. He is who they used as the idea GSD for the picture on the GSD standard. You want to know why he's not good enough anymore? Join the SHOWGSD-L e-mail list...you'll hear all sorts of interesting stuff.