Stig Stig Stig - I hate to argue - its not in my nature - but your statemnt "The DDR dogs were bred foremost for servicework, similar to the chezh GSDs." is not correct. They had working dogs and show dogs and Government bullshit borderpatrol dogs. The East Germans had a large group of people who were only interested in confirmation shows. I was there and saw them two years in a rown in the 1980's. The vast majority of the boarder patrol dogs were weak nerved dogs that would not bite anyone. So we don't want to give the DDR too much credit here.

Ed and what do you think of the czech breeding program ?

Thanks

I have seen more nice Czek dogs than DDR dogs. Kevin sheldahls dog (CJ is one of the best Police Service Dogs I have ever seen - people should be breeding this dog)I have seen his puppies and if lived closer I would be using him. Todd Gastners dog (Rockie) is an excellent dog. I only saw one puppy from him and the drive was good. This dog needs to be bred more to see what he produces.

Originally posted by stig:
If someone intressted, mike diehl has a great DDR GSD in his kennel, this dog named gradalens farox was bred in Sweden, and for me this is the ideal GSD. He looks awesome, and also has a great character. Take a look at mikes kennel. http://www.policegsd.com since we got onto the subject of Czech dogs, I personally like Brawnson (Mike's dog). But then again, I might be buyist as I have a high drive Brawnson son.

It´s true that the eastgermans also had showdogs, just like the westgermans. But it think the eastgermans had a better system with their breed survey system, they were a bit more honest about the quality of the dogs. In a show in westgermany during the 60s, it showed that many dogs which were SCH titled and passed the korung, would run in a character test, still some of these dogs keeped their VA score. Bodo and biernd lierburg was a few of these dogs that didn´t showed a lack of courage during that particular show, they also had a better structure than many others in that show, looked similar to the DDRdogs <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
Because the GSDs in the DDR was mostly a bussiness of the state, I do think that they wasn´t so affected by powerfull people in the S.V, like the wineraus, who was more intressted in a certain conformation on the dogs, which we also so in many westgermans dogs today.
The westgerman BSP has many weak in character dogs, just like the DDR bundessiger, you saw in the late 80s. I guess both the DDR and BRD bundesieger dogs was better in the 60-70s, when the show influence wasn´t so big. The breeders of servicedogs in DDR wasn´t intressted in winning the bundesieger, just like not all westgermans are. The czech dogs was formed by old DDR blood so these dogs had an important role in dogs for servicework, and the pure real working DDR bloodlines today have a lot of these old style structure and caharacter I like, that was more common in the westgerman dogs in former times. Anyway, I hate to argue to. And in this case it doesn´t lead anywhere because there are good dogs both in west and east, and czech/slovakia <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I agree that there are good dogs in all of these lines. It really bugs me when people say that a dog is better than another simply because of the nationality of their dog.

You are also correct that the DDR breed survey system was better than anything I have ever seen. While well intended it did not produce the super dogs that some claim because of a failure in the politics of the local judges.

I will say that when I went into the DDR I never saw a large influence by the government (other than their intent on keeping an eye on me 24 hours a day) in their breeding programs like you mention. It was the same there as anywhere in the world - small breeders doing their thing - some in working dogs and some in the show ring. Yes the government had a zillion border patrol dogs but when the wall came down it became evident that most were just dogs and nothing more.

The old lady here in Sweden which has written an biography about her life with GSDs described mostly the situation in eastgermany during the end of the WWII and to the late 70s. According to her the state had a big intresst in the dogs, the state bought many dogs which wasn´t sold to civilians. And civilians with good breedingdogs was given all the help they nedeed with breedings and food and so on because they did a good job with supporting the state with dogs for servicework. But I guess as time passed the influence of showbreedings and showjudges was bigger. I think it´s an intressting idea when a state breed their own servicedogs, then only health and ability counts, not politics and shows. I guess the german police in NRW has realized that they can´t trust the S.V with breeding their servicedogs, it´s better to have a breedingprogramm strictly for their needs, and I heard they have good succes with placing their dogs in the street. The czech police also had their own breedingprogram. And in Sweden we also had a servicedogfacility who breed their own dogs during 70s to late 80s, they started with lines from biernd von lierburg and some good DDR dogs. It wouldn´t be a bad idea if the goverment in a country suported the breeders of GSDs for servicework, instead of failures with dogs who can´t pass the selectiontest for servicework because they was mostly breed from weakdogs from the start.

Regards

I brought over many, many DDR dogs before the wall came down. Both German Shepherds and Snauzzers that I sold to Deleware to start their program. The DDR dogs were very masculine, they had very good pigment and for most part hips. THe big trouble with these dogs where their training alot was really terrible. Remember these people were very very poor. Most trained on their farms for a year or 2 all they did was bite work and little obedience. All force tracking, then when they could go to a trail they tried to train all of the obedience in a few weeks prior to the trial. You should have seen some of these dogs they were as good as it gets in bite work and when it came to obedience they would heel crawling around like a snake on their bellies. The Belgiums have used a lot of DDR lines in the early 90's in their breedings, some say for the size others for the defense drives. Some even say to help cover up the malinois look in some of their dogs from adding a malinois in every once in a while , who really knows. Some of the DDR dogs had a look that I dont think will ever be equalled again. They had some monster heads and bites that were so hard they could literaly crush a sleave. Some of the old sleaves I saw in the DDR were nothing more than old car tires cut and laced together and a jute cover over them. Many oh heck hundreds of these dogs went to South Africa right before the wall came down and after. There must be a great gene pool there for these dogs if they were ever bred. From what I saw it wasnt the DDR dogs that were so bad in the ways many people say it was the training they had to endure. God I wish I had kept some of those dogs.