German Shephard or Alsatian

Written in 2013 by Lois Schwarz, Founder to the American Alsatian Dire Wolf

The Alsatian was a nickname that the British gave to a breed of dog called the GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG. The British kind of FOUND this new breed (so they thought) and claimed it as their own. BUT........... the three governments of dog breed registries in the world at that time... got together with the German Club and discussed this taking over of the GERMANS GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG. The Brits were ordered to stop the name calling and were told that they could NOT claim the GSD breed as their own or anyone else's, as the proper name was the GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG. All other dog orientated clubs and governments agreed with this decision except, the British who to this day, still refer to the gsd as an ALSATIAN.

There is one more thing though... The brits did begin breeding these German Shepherd Dogs that they called 'Alsatian Wolf Dogs'. They set up clubs and kennels and stud books and started registering these dogs as the 'Alsatian Wolf Dog' on their own paperwork.

They also did several other things; they introduced wolf blood into their stock. Whatever else they introduced into their lines, who knows???? They also tried to show THEIR dogs in the dog club shows of Great Britain and were NOT allowed to use ''Wolf'' as part of the dog’s name. So they dropped the ''Wolf'' and showed them as Alsatians before the three major dog clubs of the world ordered them to stop.

So the 'Alsatian Wolf Dog Club' was a ‘bullet’ and they shot-off breeding such dogs. Many Brits claim to still have such dogs and I am sure many used the gsd as background stock. With so much gsd blood in the lines, it brings them back to the gsd.

About the coats, even though some of these GSD were bred indiscriminately with other breeds and some wolf blood, the coats tended to stay short. When you breed a tight short coat for a long time, the short coat acts as dominate, though there may be a few med coats come out in a litter (1 in 10), until such time as the short coat is the only coat being bred. After about 100 years breeding true to the breed standards of a short tight laid down coat, that coat is a dominate factor in any first generation of any outcross even if one breeds a Great Pyr. into the lines. It is not until the second generation that a breeder would see a plush or med coated pup come to the foreground, thus FOOLING the next owner/breeder.

The erect ear is also dominate and in a first generation of the mix Pyr x Gsd you will have the majority of pups with erect ears. 2 in 10 would have semi drop ears and 1 more would have a weak ear, once again fooling the new puppy owners. Breeders would then say something like "oh that happens sometimes" or "just tape the ear" or "you allowed your gsd to play too rough with your other dog and it broke down the cartilage". B.S. Now this is how the introduction of the outcrossing began and America started breeding their own American Shepherd Dogs.

What Constitutes a Breed

Scientifically: a breed is only a breed when there is a standard or blueprints that can be written down and.... When all prodigy (pups) look exactly as the standards describe.

In other words, the blue print describes the dogs to a 't'. Now, what you have to do is go to the standards of any breed and read them. If the dogs look as the standard says and the dogs breed consistently then you have a BREED.

The long coated GSD, and the King Shepherds did NOT meet these criteria until the FCI added the long coat into the breed standards.

The coat is not the only thing that makes a GSD a GSD. The rest of the standards must also fit the dogs and puppies that are being reproduced. This means the drive, the willingness to do the work that was intended for the breed to do. Can a GSD herd sheep? Or will they kill them?

There are some breeders that care about the GSD and who are breeding the true dogs that the Captain wanted so long ago. That was not a WAR DOG but a sheep herding dog.

The ONLY German Shepherd Dog Registry in my opinion is the GERMAN’S registry and NOT AKC or any other registry. In order to have a PURE BRED GERMAN Shepherd Dog you must obtain GERMAN S.V. pink papers.

To get an AMERICAN GERMAN SHEPHERD you can get AKC papers on your dog. But... are the GSD breeders here in America producing puppies that meet the breed standards? In my opinion the answer to that is no and from day one, when the American GSD Club took over the dogs, they did NOT judge them properly in order to put up (give championship status) to correct dogs.

What this means is that the Judges of AKC guided or steered the GSD towards the look that Americans thought should be a GSD. Breeders would mostly breed with Champions that won in the show ring and if the large blocky headed dogs were winning, that is what they bred with

Long Coated GSD?

Let’s take the long coated GSD... and then go back and read the standards.. If you read the standards then you would know that there is NO SUCH THING as a long coated German shepherd dog. IT IS NOT IN THE STANDARDS AND THE STANDARDS PREVENT IT. Whose dog is it any way? It is the Germans... And it is THEIR standards that are correct, not ours.

So after more than 100 years of breeding with the standards condemning long coats, the FCI just recently (2010) included in their standards that the GSD may now have a longer coat.

Now that this has happened, many LONG COATS will be bred into the pure bred GSD and the real GSD will go the way of the AMERICAN COCKER SPANIEL. There is no American Cocker Spaniel any longer. I am a witness to the death of the REAL American Cocker as I will be a witness to the death of the real GSD. It is happening right before us today. One step at a time.

Once the long coat is fully interbred into the GSD's lines, the short coat will disappear forever as the long coat is dominate over a short coat when it is continually being bred into the short coated breed.

Take a real close look at the background of the : American Cocker, the English Setter, the Gordon Setter, the Irish Setter and you will see the length of the coat getting out of hand. The work of such dogs can no longer be done. The American Cocker cannot do the job it was bred to do so long ago.

Whose fault is this? Who is ruining the breeds? Who can or will protect them? Certainly NOT AKC and now, the FCI is going in the same direction. What is the motive and drive for this? MONEY...

How many years have breeders been breeding and INTERBREEDING the GSD? How did a short close coated dog beget puppies with long coats?

When you breed two short coated dogs that only have the genes for short tight coats together, you are going to get short coats, that is how dominate the short coat is when you have 100 years of breeding true to standards. So how did the long coated gsd get that long coat?

In my opinion and expertise I can say with conviction that it came from breeding with GSD breeders who bred dogs with FALSE pedigrees. Those breeders may have known about the false pedigrees or, they may not have known, as such things are frowned upon and MUST be HIDDEN! One can lose all respect and be thrown out of the AKC for falsifying paperwork.

No one can tell me that breeders do not outcross or mix puppies up or breed with dogs that may have a shotty pedigree’s with questionable lineage. Tina Barber did it while she was registered as an AKC Kennel. She outcrossed her German Shepherd dogs to Belgians, Great Danes, Pyrenees and/or other breeds. She also put AKC papers on her so called PURE bred dogs.

Other GSD breeders used her dogs to gain size and coat and again got AKC papers on their dogs. The KING shepherds used Tina’s stock to produce their King sized GERMAN Shepherd Dogs. How many other back yard breeders also used such stock and carried on the usage of AKC paperwork?

I don’t want to just attack Tina; it’s just one person in a million who have done the same thing. Why? Supply and demand.

Today you see the long coated, the very long coated, the THICK undercoats of cottony hair. You even have some curl in some of the coats. Who knows maybe one day here in America you will have the curly coated GSD and the Wire coated GSD.

If folks want them, somehow, the stories will go.... "We got a curly coated gsd in one of our litters with AKC papers" Then someone will make up another story saying that “a long , long time ago”... there was such a thing and it must have just happened! B.S. If you buy that, you bought the Long Coat and I have some beach front property in Arizona I would like to sell you.

Now, let’s take the Shiloh... have you read the standards? There is absolutely no consistency yet in that breed. The Shiloh Shepherd Dog standards also CONTRADICT themselves.

The Shiloh as a breed is still under construction. When an established breeder consistently breeds per the standards and gets dogs that look like the standards calls for, then that one breeder is breeding true to the breed.

Let’s take the King Shepherd. Have you read the standards? The King Shepherd Dog Club and its By-Laws, (rules and history) hide many facts about where this dog came from, which I guess is ok, once the breed is established... Once again, the breed is NOT established because they have not fit the criteria for an established breed as of yet. They, like the Shiloh, are still in the developmental stages. By the way, the King Shepherd also outcrossed into other breeds of dogs, including: the Shiloh (which back then was a mix), the Great Pyr. and the Newfoundlander. All new breeds come from a mixture of other breeds, but people and clubs with integrity and honesty, come forward and tell the truth about who bred to whom.

There is more to be considered with rare breeds or undeveloped breeds that have an effect on the breed itself, that is, the Breed Club and the truths or character of the people who established the club and the standards etc...

There is a chance one takes when purchasing such dogs for say, breeding and or showing and any investment into the dog club or breed club. If however you are only looking for a pet, then it is only the ONE pup that you really need to consider besides, knowing some facts on the pups’ heredity and such.

More Facts:

The American Alsatian gov body NAAC, sent to the copywriter and bought the name "ALSATIAN" in the year 2011. The book the Alsatian Shepalute was printed in 2005. The name Shepalute was dropped in 2010.

What is a Shepherd?

Now there is a real question!  A Shepherd herds, drives and protects a flock of herd animals mainly sheep as the word in itself refers to shep or sheep.

In the world of dogs this word ‘shepherd’ is really incorrect as the word is tagged on so many different types of dogs. In the old days any dog that did the job was called a sheep herding dog or the shepherds dog. They could not call the dog a ‘shepherd’ as folks would think one was discussing a human being.

Today there are many so called ‘Shepherds’ as when humans began selectively breeding the canine they tagged a working name to the particular dog that did that job. In this field there became a division. Certain dogs were bred to do a certain job just as in the field of the bird dogs. Some of the dogs were selectively bred to protect the herds and they were not just used on one particular breed of animal. Herd protection dogs could protect any type of herds or flocks.

Within the different types of animal herds/flocks a dog may be used to round up or bite at the heels of cattle or push a large stubborn herd of ‘grazers’ from one place to another. Some folks needed a softer dog that did not bite but used its body to guide a herd or flock towards a particular direction. I personally believe that any dog could do the job that anyone wanted a dog to do if one trained the dog to do so. The ability is there but the size, coat, conformation of the dog may not be suited to the job.

If you want a working dog or a dog that is able to herd, protect sheep, nip at the heels of cattle or stay out all night with a flock of animals then you want to research ‘working dogs’ or ‘herding dogs’.

If you research all the ‘working’ breeds you will find a common thread, the ‘drive’ to do that job. What is drive? It is the longing or the hearts desire to work. No working dog is laid back. If you own a working dog that is laid back then you do not have a working dog. How could a laid back dog work? How long could it or would it work? Who ever bred your laid back working dog did the breed an injustice. That breeder is harming the entire breed as well as giving a false impression of the real working dog. What is wrong with that? Well there are some folks that want a really good working dog and if breeders of working dogs breed only laid back dogs then what will happen to the breed?

The sad thing about this is that it is happening!  If you want a real retriever (say the old fashioned working Golden Retriever) you will be hard pressed to find such a dog. Even the Labrador retriever is being bred to be fat, heavy set with an over sized head to appeal to a different kind of owner.

What all this adds up to is that the person looking for a specific dog will not be able to really know what he is going to be getting. Most gun dog owners know what they want and would never go to a so called ‘backyard’ breeder because they would not get a really good gun dog. The folks who work their dogs hang out in a circle of breeders and owners that are like they are and want what they want, they have to, and the gene pool gets tighter.

If you want a family dog or a companion dog (once again I believe any dog could perform this job) then you need to research breeds that would best be suited for the job at hand.  What type of work does this dog of yours need to do?  And what type of a look do you want in this dog? Those are the temperaments and the conformation of a dog for you.  If you get a dog that is way out of the ball park you will find yourself fighting or working really hard to modify that particular dogs abilities and desires.

If you have researched companion dogs then you know that there are no large companion dogs. None that are specifically bred as ‘companion dogs’. The closest you can come to that classification would be the ‘Non-working’ dogs. Within that class there are dogs that would be able to do a better job at just being a companion dog than a ‘working’ dog would.

Now my question to you is: Why would you want a German Shepherd dog if you are looking for a companion dog?

Because you had a German shepherd before and in your memory it was the best dog you ever had?  Perhaps you do not remember the work you put into him? Or perhaps you got one of those ‘laid back’ so called ‘German’ Shepherd dogs?  If you did get one of those laid back dogs, what kind of percentage do you think you will have to find another one?

I have had a lot of folks communicate with me about this particular subject and… the reason they came to me was because that second German shepherd dog was a real ‘working’ dog. Way too much to handle! Even the German Shepherd breeders have parted ways with the German Shepherd club.  The American Kennel Club was supposed to be created to protect the breeds yet they are the largest organization that is influencing these drastic changes by not requiring the dogs that are shown to show the ‘type’ of dog that they are. If they were required to do the job they were bred to do, wow, that would really eliminate a whole bunch of champions! Could a German Shepherd dog herd a flock of sheep. Omg! What a disaster that would be!

20 Years Ago (Written in 2013 by Lois Schwarz)

Our dogs Genetic Schutzhund lines and show lines.

Covy's Rosemary of Tucker Hill ROM

Tang of Fran-Jo

Scorpio of Shiloh Gardens

Lakesides Harrigan

Mannix of Fran Jo

Yoncalla's Mike,

Lance of Fran-Jo

Troll v. Richterbach SchH III, ROM

Covy's Mazareti of tucker hill ROM

Coberts Serocca of Windigal ROM

Sel Ch Karagins Crusader ROM

Clayfield Devon v Hansmekon ROM

Ch. Laurels you can call me al

Hausmekon Covey tucker hill N.Y.

Ch. Randhiems Wyatt Earp

Sel ch Woodacres Dakota ROM

can am Sel ch Stuttgarts Sundance ROM

Brut Vom Edelhaus d489464 12-88

Carla v Wustenhaus 12-88

Jeff v. Flamings Sand Sch Il

Urte A.D. Quitzostadt Sch Il

Ingo v. Rudengen SchhII,

Quax Haushooland III

Fanny Vom Perf-GansbacheckII,

Rops von Der Goldberghiede III,

Jorey von Der Grone III

Anschivonder AngelburgI II,

Ulrich von Der WeinerauI II

Our dogs Alaskan Malamute lines:

Ch. Silver Frost Bold Savage wb435950 blk/wh

Silver Frost Cuyahoga

Silver Sled’s Kyna of Nipigon

Sitka Sadie’s Prince wd033270 bk/wh

Trawick’s shadow dusk wc601928 blk/wh

Silver Frost Aphrodite wc173533 gr/wh

Khantou wb884985 blk/wh/gr

Tara Natasha of wolf gray wb897108 wlf/gr/wh

Evergreen’s Shama Kiska wc318470 wlf/gr/wh

Satan of silver frost wd449948 wlf/gr/wh

Koshka of suns delight wd715546 wlf/gr