The flying trot was created by the show world.
Yes, they may be able to do that for extended periods but then a lot of dogs can do the AD which is a 12 mile run for dog and handler. That's a walk in the park for any herding dog in condition.

Problem is the show dogs didn't have all that angulation before the late 1960s early 70s. It started showing up in the show ring NOT the pasture. All the show people were looking for was extending the reach and drive. They did get that but at what expense?
Watch those dog simply walk across a ring. All the extra angulation makes them wobble like a weeble. Hocks flailing all over the place.
Yes, they can do the flying trot but give them a few hard turns in a pasture and watch how quickly they crumble.

I herded sheep with my working line GSD and yes, he could go all day INCLUDING agile turns with no wobbly hocks.

"The flying trot was created by the show world. "


and the prey monkey was created by the sport world - valid?

who knows what the GSD is, did it ever exist outside of some, neat prose of max, who from what I can tell was a crap breeder in his dayand never trained a dog.

I sure haven't a clue what a GSD is, and when pressed nobody else seems to either but everyone is sure they are right. all I know is what style of dog I like and where to get them, I think that's about as good as it gets.

the only honest way out of this mess is to do the blatantly obvious (and imo WILL happen) is to make it formal and logical define the sub-breeds as new breeds, write new standards to match and things will become rational again....until the next split defined by some individuals personal taste.

Imagine a thought experiment in which you would line up, shoulder to shoulder, every dog on the planet, and you have the power to put them all in order so that they are as close to identical to the next dog as possible. Each dog would be a near-twin to his neighbor.

At one end of this line, say, you’d have some tiny hairless dog. At the other end is a Tibetan Mastiff. In between, a gradual spectrum of possible variance. As you travel down the line of hundreds of millions of dogs they would imperceptivity morph. A hock bone, ear, or tail in this dog is a micron longer than the next, a skull angle is a fraction of a hundredth of a degree different than the next, one hair is a different color than the next. Across 500 million individual dogs, the possible genetic difference is extremely varied, but from one dog to the next they are imperceptible.

Now, it is your job to draw a line between individual dogs in the lineup. Where do you draw the official boundaries around any particular breed? Between which two nearly identical dogs do you draw the line between “Shiloh Shepherd” and “German Shepherd?” Where do you draw boundaries around varieties within a breed? Is this one “working line” and the next “show line?” Each one is imperceptible from the next.

Sure, it's easy to find the sweet spot in the line where you're confident that these dogs here are clearly Irish Setters. And farther down the line, that section is Gordon Setters. But genetic variation doesn't provide clear boundaries, except for the ones that we arbitrarily draw.

That's how I see dogs. The obvious ones are easy to spot. The arguments always happen in the grey areas.

In the working Border Collie world the breed is defined by the work they do not how they look. Sure, there are obvious preferences but most everyone will override their aesthetic preferences for a sound worker. Because of this there is a great variation in the size and appearance in working bred BCs. Show line ones (which are genetically as different from working ones as another breed) are pretty uniform in appearance.

You can say what you want about GSDs. You're discounting all of the work put in by conscientious breeders to select and define what characteristics help define a GSD's suitability for many different types of work and sport. People mistakenly speak only of herding when discussing work for GSDs, but until the recent emergence and popularity of the Malinois, the GSD had been the go-to breed for service, military, enforcement duties, and every type of hazard detection. They have also been extensively employed as guard dogs by security contractors and for personal protection. To try to limit the scope of the GSD's suitability to pasture vs. show ring is shortsighted. IMO, much more emphasis and expectation is put on the working lines for overall performance than is put on the show lines.

There are showline dogs that can compete in sport. A recently retired national star in IPO competition was also a United States Sieger. I know a showline breeder who titles all of her dogs, and they are competitive. However, she and other breeders understand the distinction between the lines.

"the only honest way out of this mess is to do the blatantly obvious (and imo WILL happen) is to make it formal and logical define the sub-breeds as new breeds, write new standards to match and things will become rational again....until the next split defined by some individuals personal taste".


I wouldn't be the first "breed" that happened to.

The Fox terrier became the Smooth Fox terrier and the Wire Haired Fox terrier sometime in the 30s

The Norwich Terrier produced two ear carriages. The prick ear and the drop ear. I believe it was in the early 70s the drop ear became the Norfolk terrier.

The Setters are another group where the show line looks nothing like the working line.
A working line Irish Setter looks more like a big Cocker Spaniel then it does the tall, "graceful" show dog.

In Ireland the Irish Setter also recognizes a red and white Irish setter.

MANY of todays 'breeds" are offshoots of other breeds simply because someone favored something different in the breed be it looks or performance.