• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Patreon
  • Premium Membership
  • Services

Natural History

by Scottie Westfall

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« German Shepherds in the Snow
Is it a wolfdog? »

Banned Down Under

November 17, 2019 by SWestfall3

Alsatian wolf dog

Australia is a place that has good reason to worry about invasive species. Invasive species have run amok across that continent and have done so even before European colonization.

It always makes me cringe when I hear a German shepherd dog referred to as an “Alsatian” or an “Alsatian wolfdog.”.   Yes, there is debate as to how much wolf is in this breed or if there is any wolf blood in them at all.  The only people who call them by this name live in parts of the former British Empire, which once shed blood by the millions against the German Empire in a truly senseless war.  However, the Germans did create this breed, but the jingoism of the times has led to that Alsatian name becoming fully fixed in some sectors of the English-speaking world.

And this led to a particular problem in Australia. Australia lived by sheep grazing. Anything that got in the way of sheep grazing.  In the early part of the twentieth century, Australia was quite concerned about the importation of the German shepherd into that country under the assumption that it was a high content wolf dog that would go feral and breed with dingoes. Adding that blood to the dingo would make them even more murderous on sheep, and major livestock interests pushed the Australian government into banning the importation of the breed. The state of Western Australia went even further with its Alsatian Dog Act of 1929, which require all dogs of the breed that had already been imported to be sterilized.

Robert Kaleski, Polish-Australian who wrote at length about dogs in that country in his Australian Barkers and Biters, had a definite bias against the breed. He believed the dogs were derived from German zoo wolves that were crossed with dogs. Kaleski’s parents were both from Poland, and they probably possessed a strong anti-German bias that was passed onto their son, which obviously may have tainted his views on them.  In his text, Kaleski was adamant that these dogs were wolfdogs, and they would be dangerous if allowed to mate with dingoes in the Australian bush.

We can debate about how much wolf is in a German shepherd, but one thing we cannot debate is what a German shepherd is primarily.  The German shepherd is a sheepdog, a sheepdog that was later re-fashioned into a military and police dog. But the dogs still possess strong herding instincts, and many are capable of managing stock.

Kaleski was a major chronicle of the Australian herding dog, including what became the kelpie and the Australian cattle dog. His knowledge of the practical uses of dogs was formidable.

But his erudition on dog origins left a lot to be desire. He was certain that dogs and red foxes could hybridize. He even devoted a whole section of his book to such nonsense, including a photo of a supposed dog-fox cross that looks a lot more like a border collie crossed with a terrier than anything else.  He was certain that dingoes and foxes were crossing in the wild in Australia, and that the dingo-fox was going to be a major agricultural threat as well.

Australia has since allowed the German shepherd in, and I’m absolutely certain that German shepherds have bred with dingoes in the wild. Dingoes are not unicorn creatures that maintain blood purity in the wild. They are feral primitive dogs that will cross with less feral and less primitive dogs whenever they meet them. “Pure” dingoes are almost nonexistent. I don’t think we can say that the scare-mongering lived up to reality. Dingoes and dingo-cross dogs do kill sheep, but nature has a way of selecting out those that would approach the German shepherd in size. Larger dogs require more red meat to survive in the wild, so it would be harder for them to thrive in a land mostly devoid of large prey.

And yes, classifying the dingo and how to handle dingo-domestic dog introgression are controversial topics, but even with our more nuanced understanding of taxonomy, it is difficult to see that importing the German shepherd into Australia led to massive pressures on the sheep industry.

Also, notice that the main concern of Kaleski and the various government entities of Australia was agricultural. They were not at all bothered by what such creatures might do to kangaroos or to other native animals. After all, he was writing at a time when settlers of Tasmania were wiping out the thylacine, an animal that was truly unique to the continent. I guarantee you that the idea of possibly setting up a conservation population of wild thylacines on Australia’s mainland would have as much an anathema to these people as the importation of the German shepherd.

Kaleski was living in a society that was running sheep in the British way. Once the Enclosure had cleared the land of most human inhabitants and the last wolves were finally killed off, sheep were left to graze in nearly wild conditions in parts of the British Isles. Some sheep became “hefted” to the land. The migrated over the mountains and moorland, possessing ancestral knowledge of where to go through the grazing year in much the same way wild sheep roam their mountain territories.

Australian sheep grazers did the same thing. It’s just when they did it, they had to deal with dingoes and thylacines.  They massacred the predators and built huge fences to hold them back.

However, if Kaleski had more knowledge of how Germans used sheepdogs, he would not have been as biased against the breed. German sheep grazers grazed on concessions that often lacked fences. The dogs moved the sheep and kept them in these grazing concessions. The sheep were tame, and the dogs used their large size and wolfy physiques to control the stock.

He may not have seen a use for such a dog in Australia, but he could have seen that it was a very useful herding dog in Europe and would not have joined in the fury that led to the German shepherd ban.

That Alsatian wolf-dog name has not served the breed well, and in the case of Australia, it almost led to its very extirpation from that country.

 

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Print
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Posted in German shepherd dog | Tagged German shepherd dog, German shepherds banned in Australia |

  • Like on Facebook

    The Retriever, Dog, and Wildlife Blog

    Promote Your Page Too
  • Blog Stats

    • 9,603,370 hits
  • Retrieverman’s Twitter

    • one person followed me // automatically checked by fllwrs.com 11 hours ago
    • 2 people followed me // automatically checked by fllwrs.com 3 days ago
    • @TetZoo I am unfamiliar with any wild canid with those markings. Unless they are German shepherds, specifically tho… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 5 days ago
    • @cyborgsuzy I hated all my time in the DC area. Same reason. Toxic culture. Makes you feel like you're in some kin… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
    • @TetZoo That was the proto QAnon conspiracy theory. Wow. America is sending out lots of toxic slime conspiracy theo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
  • Google rank

    Check Google Page Rank
  • Archives

    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
  • Recent Comments

    markgelbart on Retiring this Space
    oneforestfragment on Retiring this Space
    The Evolving Natural… on So does the maned wolf break t…
    SWestfall3 on So does the maned wolf break t…
    Ole Possum on So does the maned wolf break t…
  • Meta

    • Register
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.com
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,703 other followers

  • Pages

    • About
    • Contact
    • Patreon
    • Premium Membership
    • Services
  • Subscribe to Retrieverman's Weblog by Email
  • Revolver map

    Map

  • Top Posts

    • The wolf's only major natural predator
  • SiteCounter

    wordpress analytics
    View My Stats
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,703 other followers

  • Donate to this blog

  • Top 50 Northwest Dog Blogs

    top 50 dog blogs

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    %d bloggers like this: