The best thing you can do in life is admit error and move on, but it is not without risk. I’ve noticed that I’ve lost significant readership on this blog since I’ve tried to distance myself more from the “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” movement. It is not that I disagree with the movement entirely. It is that I have discovered that I was fundamentally wrong about one breed that has been featured in the movement.
This is the comment online of which I am the most ashamed.
It’s not so much what I said. If someone actually were trying to reverse engineer plantigrade in a dog, it would be a very bad thing.
But what I am most ashamed of is that this was the first comment on a blog post on the Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog, which is about a sable German shepherd named Paddy, who won best of breed at what we call the National Dog Show here in the United States.
If you sleuth around my blog for a bit, you will see a dog named Quest. He is a sable German shepherd from parents who are both AKC conformation champions. If you now that most well-bred German shepherds have their pedigrees listed on a site called “Pedigree Database,” you might want to play around with Quest’s pedigree a bit.
Quest is Hammersmith Can I Kick It. Trigger warning: he’s in a three-point stack. If you don’t want to see a GSD in a three-point stack, don’t click it.
His mother is Kysarah’s Whiskey In The Jar.
If you look at her, you can see that she looks a lot like the dog in the Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog I linked to earlier. She is female and long-coated, but they are very similar dogs.
The reason for this similarity is that if you look at her siblings on the website, Kysarah’s Pot of Gold, which is Paddy, pops up as her full brother. Indeed, they are littermates.
So yes, I have been living with a Paddy nephew for several months
This is Quest in a sort of free stack.
This dog has quite a bit of drive. He loves chasing the ball, and he recently discovered that herding sheep was the best thing ever.
This dog does have a show career, and he actually came in second at the 4-6 puppy class at the German Shepherd National Specialty in St. Louis in August (which was judged by James Moses).
This dog is probably not going to be an IPO dog. He hasn’t been bred for so much drive and an ability to bite hard and hold on.
But he is obedient and gentlemanly as a puppy can be. He dogs very well.
Indeed, in this photo, he has been confused with a straight up working line dog:
He has many years of maturity to go. He will probably angle up a bit as he matures over the next two or three years.
But he’s a fit, active dog with a strong will to obey and do things.
And yes, he does do the stack:
Now, I have since admitted that I was wrong about these dogs, and I’ve noticed something: readership on this blog has gone down quite a bit.
It is true I’m not writing all that controversial stuff that I once did. I’m writing lots of lyrical and philosophical stuff, and those things do take times to read.
But I can’t help but wonder if my change of mind had something to do with my sudden drop in readership.
I also know that I have lost online friends over this dog, and his presence has even led to me leaving my Facebook Group over this dog, simply because I got tired of people constantly berating him.
I have learned my lesson about using one’s position online to promote causes: you’d better know what you’re talking about before ginning up an electronic lynch mob.
And I didn’t when I attacked this breed. Yes, there probably are some dogs that have poor rears and ataxic gaits, but no one is breeding for those traits. In this country, the goal is make perfect smooth trot.
These dogs are no threat to the police work-type dogs, which are bred in their own lines. I very much like these dogs, too, but I don’t think my criticism of the show dogs is correct.
I was wrong, and if you hate me now because I’ve changed my perspective, then I’m very sorry.
But I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been around enough dogs of this type now to know that I was wrong.
They are not breeding police dogs, but they are breeding dogs that can do so much and make wonderful pets.
It’s a wonderful thing to admit when your wrong; It’s why I love your blog (can you imagine PB Burns doing such a thing?). I still don’t like American GSDs, but if there was a dog with the general shape of the American with straighter back legs (no “Saggy Hocks” as I call them, when free-standing), straighter forelimbs (atrociously down-in-the-pasterns dogs are becoming more and more prevalent), and a bit of protection instinct and I will snap it up! Nothing wrong with breeding pets, as long as the working ones still live and they don’t claim that the longer the stride, the more efficient the trot. I have had bad experiences with American showlines (I owned one who didn’t even bark when a robber broke into the house at 3 AM, his back legs basically crumpled under him in old age) but you appear to have gotten a great companion! May he live long and prosper, and his hock never hit the deck!
After attending a very recent GSD specialty show I’ll still say that many ASLs are on the far end of the bell curve of angulation, with over angulation and laxity of the rear being all too common features. Watching a GSDCA seminar, it seems they have trouble taking their own advice on what is a workable trot for a sheep tending breed. The GSD is not unique in its herding style, and the average show example has no need for such overreach and kick up in front and rear. Dogs in Motion even had something to say within its pages on how over reach had no significant benefit over the trotting styles of most other breeds. It appears to be the fanciers’ desire to fix what isn’t broken, to improve on what was perfectly fine before being meddled with.
I saw Paddy at the show where he was selected to be BoB for the National Dog Show that year. Wasn’t too fond of him. He wasn’t crippled, as he didn’t need a wheelchair to make his round around the ring. But he stood with his rear in a way that I don’t believe any dog with typical rear structure would be able to attain unless they had been frozen in time while rising from a sitting position (I’d say sickle hocked, others might disagree). But it is not as simple or cut and dry as some like to try and make it. It’s not “straight back” vs “sloped back”, or “working dog” vs “dysplastic hock walking show dog”. PDE was a good documentary in my opinion, and has definitely helped keep the fire going in me to work to attain my DVM degree. But as with most documentaries, there’s the habit of the audience not going out to dig deeper into the material that documentary did not have the runtime to explain in depth. It can leave many with the thoughts of “mutts good, purebreds bad”, when the issues are much more diverse with different causes and different solutions, with differing levels of how the breed fanciers of their respective breeds are actually working to solve these problems.
I find that it is hard for fanciers to steer away from the path of moderation only slightly and then tell themselves to stop. Hell, West German show lines have the double whammy of angulation problems and shitty toplines due to it popping up in one popular stud. It seems breeds as a whole can rarely stay balanced on that border of moderate and over exaggerated for long, at least from what I have seen.
Very true. I was watching last year’s dog show yesterday and thought to myself “Maybe it’s not so bad. There’s actually a lot of unexaggerated breeds.” Then I realized that they were all NEWER breeds. One other thing I noticed: The bluetick, walker, and redbone coonhounds (all added in the 2000s) looked the same as any you would see tied out back of a mountain man’s house, but the black-and-tan (added in the 40s) had quite a bit of loose skin. It seems to be on the path to becoming an odd-colored bloodhound.
I’ll be a reader for as long as your blog exists :) , though I’m not online nearly as often or for as long as I used to be.
I always told myself I’d never say this if the opportunity arose, but I have to say it just this once:
I told you so!
<3
Good for you!
I concluded some time back that the Pedigreed Dogs Exposed movement was too extreme to do much actual good, and I was dismayed by the numbers of people who were quite willing to tell me they knew more than I did about my own dogs when they’d never owned one and wanted different things from dogs than I did (I want companions).
Open minds are a wonderful thing.
Good for you – all very sensible.
My question is should these dogs, who make good pets, still be exhibited as being protective shepherd dogs instead of the dogs who still do the work?
They are still protective shepherd dogs that herd well. They just aren’t good for IPO or police work. As a sheepdog, they are better than those bred for security and military work,simply because they haven’t been bred for strong tugging and biting motor patterns, which are hard to control around sheep.
Well Done