HI

i am into workinglines and plan to have them for good ,however i am a newbie,i just would like to throw a question,,first of all most trainers agree that it is far in between where you will find a strong nerve dog that will bite for real when it comes to protection,then what made the workingline gsd so different from showline gsd aside from bein hyper?after all that is said and done,ball drives,prey drive etc,if in the end it wont make the cut?of gettin what you wanted the dog for?pls enlighten me on this many thanks

Showline dogs are bred to look beautiful in the show ring, but when you breed dogs selected for their looks and conformation is narrows your options for which dogs you can breed to produce beautiful puppies. So when a show breeder has dogs that are questionable in nerve and temprement, but perfect in show conformation then the dog will be bred. Over the generations you end up with good looking dogs with weak character and low drives because it's been bred out of them due to selecting stud dogs for appearance, not temprement.

With working lines, appearance is not high on the list, they don't care as much about pigment or color or whether the dogs head is too big for his body, the only physically important thing is whether the dog is structurally sound (good hips, elbows and health). The dogs are selected for their working abilities, its not hyperness, a labrador is hyper, its a combination of drives and nerves. The dog needs the drive to persist. If you throw a ball over a fence, you want the dog that spends 45 minutes trying to get the ball on the other side of the fence, not the dog that say "well, I can't get to it, I'm gonna go find something else to do". You want the dog to be able to focus on a task without getting bored or distracted. You also want good nerves, because it's useless to have a dog that is very persistent to reach his goal, but will give up when he hears a loud noise or knocks over a trash can while tracking and panics etc.

The reason you see so many working lines that "don't make the cut" is because not every dog can be perfect and not everyone can handle the best higest drive hardest dog, so they intentionally look for an easier to handle dog. You need to breed exceptional dogs in order to produce good ones, and if you are lucky there will be 1 puppy in the litter that happens to get all the great traits you liked in the parents, but in a litter of 8 that leaves 7 other pups that might be good, and they might not be. Most should be fine for sport work, but some will be better than others, genetics are based on the entire pedigree of the dog, if there is a dog somewhere in the back of the pedigree that produces some good dogs and some nervey dogs, then if you are unlucky then that dogs genetics will show up in your litter.

Remember too, just because a breeder is breeding working lines doesn't mean he is a good breeder, the dogs he is breeding might suck, or look very impressive to someone that doesn't know what they are looking for. For club level sport you just need a dog that has enough drive to do the sport at a passing level, you don't need the toughest badass and most people can't handle the toughest badass anyway.

So true Mike.
I have seen too, so many badly bred showlines that you've got to wonder a lot of them don't have good nerves and if you add bad bones, my gosh whats left? And I am not talking about all, but I have to say so far 2 out 4 showlines I recently saw were badly bred, bad confirmation , bad nerves ,bad coat...I think showlines are soo over bred and tooo many breeders, and only a hand full of good ,reasonable,doing homework before breeding kinda breeders.I know working lines have their own issues but their are way too many bad showline dogs being bred today!!

Is there any certification you have to go through to be a unrecognized breeder or is it mostly relying on your reputation?

Do Pups which you want to try and develope for Schutzhund training have to take a temperment test, if so what age does this apply

At 6 months old you can kinda see how the pup will be if you know what to look for, but if you are picking a puppy from a litter, at 7 weeks old there are certain tests you can do, depending on who's testing system you like the tests are different. Leerburg has a puppy testng article too.

Theres no certifications to be a breeder, I don't know about the rest of Europe but last I heard, in Germany the SV requires a show rating and a working title before a GSD can be bred (if you want the pups to have papers that is). In the US any idiot with 2 dogs and AKC papers can breed. I don't know what FCI requires for breeding but I don't think working titles are neccesary, correct me if I'm wrong.

There is a kind of saying... breed enough litters and there will have to be one good puppy somewhere along the line. Some times it is when a breeder has 10 litters and 1 pup turns out good that his kennel name becomes famous. Most people don't check to see what else the kennel produced, they just go on that one dog that is really great and then the kennel starts breeding even more to keep up with the demand. There are also people with really great dogs who are piss poor producers, so you can't always go on how good one dog is, you need to see what else the dog has produced and what his lines are known for.

That was a great explanation and I love it. But I'm curious ... why can't you have both a good looking dog with good working drives.

Form follows function.

Not coincidentally, when you breed for function, one seems to get a crisp, sharp, beautifully utilitarian asthetic anyway. I'm thinking of our latter day worker bees: ACDs, Kelpies, Malinois, GSDs, Border Collies, Stocky block-headed Labs.

I consider these to be the best looking dogs ever. It's not despite, but BECAUSE of the neccesary importance of health and pragmatic structure that these dogs, at least in my opinion, sizzle and pop in the looks department.

And I'm not sure what I could add to Mike's explanation as to why you can't have mutant hyenas (if you call that good looking) and workability.

Steven, Well said.

Great explanation too Mike! I actually think the working line dogs are better looking & there's just something about a healthy, energetic dog that makes me smile. I've seen plenty of showline dogs with horrible temperaments and the breeders claim "bred for temperament" somewhere in their sites. Yeah right! I went to quite a few conformation shows since last year and came close to buying a dog from show breeders. I consider myself lucky because I never did. They might have turned out to be decent dogs, but now that I want to do sport, they may not have had what it took to excel at it and took up the spot of a working line dog that can excel at it.