Breeds change through the time and standard is written as guidance and that is what we are discussing here. Everyone can have different opinions ofcourse since standard is not telling us exactly dog should have this and this messurements.. So standard can be looked at from different extreme's and angle's.
Bye, Raven
PS: Let's not start posting pictures looking for faults since there is no perfect dog and every dog usually has at least one fault.
Logged
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. ~Dandemis
Willy is not standing cow-hooked. As you can see his right leg is standing outward which makes it very difficult to stand correctly. As Jenni said pictures were expensive those days. So one shot decided how we know him.
Every showdog I know stands like that more that once (even Yentos and he is certainly not cow-hooked). It is when dogs put their paws in line with their body that you can see whether they are cow-hooked.
More info on the heads to come when I am at home.
Saskia
Logged
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
Yes the standard is the most important thing, because if you do not follow the standard you end up with dogs that do not look like BSD, and the standard also refers to temperement. Can you please post pic of the dogs you mentioned so that we can see what you explain, thank you.
Originally a sheep dog, today a working dog (guarding, defence, tracking, etc.) and an all-purpose service dog, as well as a family dog.
The Belgian Shepherd is a watchful and active dog, bursting with energy, and always ready to leap into action. As well as its innate skill at guarding flocks, it also possesses the highly prized qualities of the best guard dog of property. Without any hesitation it is the stubborn and keen protector of its owner. It brings together all those qualities necessary for a shepherd, guard, defence and service dog. Its lively, alert temperament and its confident nature, showing no fear or aggressiveness, should be obvious in its body stance and the proud attentive expression in its sparkling eyes. When judging this breed, one should take into consideration its calm and fearless temperament.
Quote
working ability is what you are breeding for in a Malinois
if you do not look at morfology and only working ability than you will end up with a dog that is not a BSD, but another breed, i can understand that you need this caractristic or that caracteristic for your sport, but then call the dogs a diferent names then BSD. It is also wrong to breed dogs only on morfology without taking into consideration the temperement, off course.
Quote
I have never looked at show standard stuff ever, but why not? Standard wording descriptions are vary vague and open to interpretation(in my opinion). I have a bit of a problem with "the skull and muzzle are roughly the same length." I like the muzzle to be a little longer than the skull, but does that mean the same as "roughly?"
I like this answer and comment, it shows an open mind. the standard says "at the most a very slight bias in favour of the muzzle " and once again very slight means diferent thingsd to diferent people but then the standard says "Measurements: Average normal measures for an adult male Belgian Shepherd of 62 cm at the withers: ? Length of body (from point of shoulder to point of buttock): 62 cm. ? Length of head: 25 cm. ? Length of muzzle: 12,5 ? 13 cm."
so this means that at the most the muzzle can be 52% of the lenght of the head, so there is a measurement to it, and does not leave it to a personal interpretation.
Quote
***The ONLY challenge is...CAN the dog work??...if it can and it does well...then it's 'type' is correct...NO?? The BSD's 'hallmark' is not its head or it's body...It is its WORKABILITY....This is WHY there is a 'split' between conformation people and working people IMHO.
well here is where the big issue is, and now i ask what does work means??? according to the standard "Originally a sheep dog, today a working dog (guarding, defence, tracking, etc.) and an all-purpose service dog, as well as a family dog." "It brings together all those qualities necessary for a shepherd, guard, defence and service dog. "
So for me if a dog can do this tasks he can work, and with the measuremnts of the standard the dog can work, another question is can the dog be a top winning dog at IPO or mondioring or agility... with this measurements??? then maybe here the discutions starts, because diferent sports require diferent abilities and so diferent type of dogs, so i agree maybe a dog according to the standard may no suite a top dog in all this sports, but then, please breed for top dogs in this sports, but don't call then BSD, because in order to be a BSD it has to be a dog according to the standard.
So please i ask all of you to not start a working / beauty war, it is not the intention of this discution, the intention is to find a good head that suits the standard, and off course try to understand the standard with the diferent inputs on this forum.
Willy is not standing cow-hooked.? As you can see his right leg is standing outward which makes it very difficult to stand correctly.?
Hi!
Didn?t claim he was or wasnt just said it could be... Even if he would be we can?t tell by one pic... but hey, lets stick to heads for now.. unless we open another post under other board.
Logged
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. ~Dandemis
As Raven and Hunden already know: my goal was to translate old standards to compare whether standards changed dramatically or not. Now I will set myself new goals: Each week I will translate a specific part of the old standards and we can see the evolution. I have already spoken to some judges who have been around a long time and in contradiction to e.g. GSD standard, the BSD standard has not changed a lot.
I currently have a picture of a painting at home of 3 Terv heads. They were painted in 1923 at a point where there wasn't a huge difference between working and non-working lines. I will scan the picture after I inform Jean-Marie and you will see that the heads of these Tervs do not differ a lot from what we see now (it is a front view and not a profile view). Unfortunately I also do not know who these dogs are.
But for the most part I agree with Mont Alves: breed standard is important but it is all in the eye of the beholder. Somewhere in this forum there was a discussion on Jules du Moulin. Good looking dog, wonderful working dog (won Belgian Championship BR two times in a row) but hardly used for breeding by working people. The only reason I could find in literature for this was because of his white patches. So looks and standard did matter to "working people" in the old days and they did not enter Jules into their breeding program just because he had too much white.
Saskia
Logged
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
Hmmm. Actually conformation is the thing that makes dog able to work.
Too long back with that speed and collisionforces causes injuries (just go that IPO-thread to see... ) also the speed in turns suffers from too loose elbows and wrong angulations. You can not breed only the mind of the dog and strength between the ears. The comformation is the vessel thru what that mind works. Like in Finland we have several good dogs. But the list of backproblems rises up questions.
Unless the dog is SUPER long, I have not seen a relationship between length of body and injuries. And then I've seen more problems with specifically a long loin, vs just a long body overall. The jamming issues we were talking about on the IPO thread are more related to neck/shoulder problems than back problems, as that is where the impact/torque is. I haven't had lower back issues in my dogs, what I have seen is in their old age they are arthritic in the neck/shoulder area, which eventually effects their mobility in their lower back/rear end.
On the flip side, it has been my experience that the average working dog is more althletic than the average show dog. They can run faster, corner better, jump higher, etc. Not that there aren't exceptions to this. So maybe the working people are onto something, in regards to the structure that best increases the physical abilities of the dogs. Or maybe the written standard is being mis-interpreted somehow by the people breeding strictly for conformation?
Regarding the Collie bred into Tervs, and GSD bred into Mals comment someone made. Although it's possible this was done, it's just as possible the looks changed via selective breeding. Either selecting for, against, or just not considering head shape. Look at the Boston Terrier, Chi, Great Dane, Bloodhound, etc. And consider the origins of the dog. Those physical changes are WAY more radical than a longer/narrower head, a heavier/wider head, etc. And they were obtained by selective breeding. So why couldn't the differences in BSD head types also have been obtained that way?
Well in Europe there was done some mixing with other breeds..unoficially ofcourse.. Don?t wont to jump out with the name of kennel that did it to tervueren because I am not sure it is the right one and dont want to say the wrong one.. but it was a french.
I?m sure we have people here who know this little better and would maybe tell little more details..
Bye, Raven
PS: This ofcourse I got from people on forum, I think it was already brought up once but didn?t go further. About GSD and mals I also heard.. but on that didn?t get any more info.. Let?s hope someone who knows more will share.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2005, 10:34:27 PM by Raven »
Logged
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. ~Dandemis
I'm sure it's been done (Terv/Collie, Mal/GSD). I'm just saying not EVERY long/narrow headed Terv, or wider/heavier headed Mal has another breed in it. Some might be, but some won't, the physical changes will just be from the selection process.
Obviously I can't add color patterns that don't currently exist. But other than that, I'm sure given enough generations, strictly through selecting on physical traits, I could breed dogs that were pedigreed BSD, but looked like GSD, Bouvier, Border Collies and even Beauceron.
If you look at the working people, they like the Mal. This is generally speaking the only BSD that still works. Show people here in America (can't speak for Eu) Have totally destroyed the grenadal and terv. I have only seen one Laek, and it was a show dog. I always hear from show people that conformation is what makes a dog be able to work. Amazingly, I gave examples of the best dogs I know of earlier in this post and they were avoided. Show people here in America, destroy the fuzzy breeds cause they are cute. Is it this way in Europe? Look at the American version of the show GSD and you will know why we are so passionate. When you show, you don't realy know structure like you think you do out of some book. Look at your tervs that look like ugly collies. No way they need that much coat. Like the picture of willie, which for all I can tell IS a collie. Then when working people bring these things up, you act like we are working dysplastic, eastie-westie, dogs with nuclear power plant meltdown heads. It is not so. We know you only breed for pretty. Pretty changes with the mood of a judge or a whim of the show populace. Working ability is working ability. It always stays the same. So now you can get a good idea of why you piss us off.
As a working dog guy, I think this Jeff guy is a JACKASS and take offense to him trying to group "us working people" He has not made one intelligent comment that I can find so far. But I guess we all have our opinions.......
Logged
"I have come to see my dogs as a reflection of my willingness to try to improve, as well as an unsparing measure of my frequent failures in doing so."
I understand you can?t all have same opinions.. but a thread that was supposed to be about BSD heads is now thread about everything. Almoust no inteligent post from it all..
Stick to the head for now.. the rest of the body will come..
I would rather read why are for instance working malinois heads like they are, does bigger head make dog better for work and so on... standard is like it is..
I don?t see why someone would be pissed about anything.. you have your dog who is from working lines, great, your choice and I hope it fullfils all your expectations.
Bye, Raven
Logged
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. ~Dandemis
Author
Logged
