Karl Fuller's wife posted this on Pedigree Database:


The breeder from the old-established kennel (61 years!) "Zwinger vom Kirschental", Karl Füller, is seriously ill and has been now for about 5 months in hospital. There is no hope of a satisfactory recovery at his age of 85.
I am Karl’s wife Marion and I already stopped breeding (kennel “vom Kirschenbach&ldquo some 10 years ago, so did our son Matthias (”vom Haus Kirschental&ldquo 2 years ago for professional and family reasons.
As my health is not so good either, we have to reduce substantially our breeding stock or even give up breeding.
For this reason we are forced to sell some high-quality breeding females as well as puppies.
Marion Füller

I had not heard before this that Karl was ill. Many of us have GSDs with the vom Kirschental name- even Drift the Magnificent has a couple of v Kirschental dogs in her lines.

Karl has done so much for the the GSD breed ... I was deeply saddened to hear this...

I hope that Karl is able to recover enough to return home to spend his remaining time with the dogs that he loves so much...

--Kel

What a wonderful picture. I too hope he can return home in peace and spend his last days with his family of all kinds.

This is sad news indeed.

I love that picture.

I hope he gets to have peace at home too. I am fortunate enough to work with a whole bunch of Kirschental dogs every weekend. They are definitely wonderful, amazing GSD's.

Kirschental will long be remembered as one of the great breeding kennels. Among other things, they provided the foundation stock for Fidelco -- in the US, one of the earliest breeders and trainers of German Shepherd guide dogs. They were impressed with the work ethic and bidibility of the dogs.
http://www.fidelco.org/breedwithin.html

Through Nina and Lucy, many of Leerburg's dogs had a strong Kirschental influence.

My old guy, Chance, was a Lucy/Ron son. Some years back, the local club hosted Wilfred Scheld. Herr Scheld is a highly-regarded koermeister and herding judge. He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of working lines. His uncle, Alfred Lahntal, was well known for the zum Lahntal and Busecker Schloss dogs - (Greif, Natan, and others).

At dinner, I pulled out a copy of Chance's pedigree. He liked it. I expected him to comment on any one of the strong males in that lineage. The dog he immedidately picked out was Fenga v Kirtschtal. As he nodded and noted, "A very strong female."

I'd have to check, but I think Leerburg's HGH video has Karl Fuller and either Fenga or Winnie. It was amazing to watch him and the dogs handle the sheep. His calm and studied demeanor made it look easy enough that even I could do it.

Between him and Manfred Hayne, few others had any chance at the HGH championship.

Even though Kirtschental produced a number of influential show dogs, they always kept their herding lines out with the flocks.

I've always liked browsing their site,
http://www.kirschenbach.de/index.php?lang=en