German Shepherd

The German Shepherd, An American Saga

Jim Engel 2010

For a century now the German Shepherd in America, the promoters, the advocates, the pretenders and the fan boys, bound together in their national organizations and international affiliations and relationships, have been a bizarre conglomeration of noble intentions and high sounding slogans that in practice all too often degenerate into hypocrisy, stupidity and greed. These American enthusiasts bask in the police dog aura and Rin Tin Tin persona, but have systematically molded the American lines into grotesque, insipid caricatures of the vision of von Stephanitz. Nothing Alice found down the rabbit hole could even begin to compare to this Machiavellian saga.

Least one object to this focus on the German Shepherd in a police dog book, the simple fact is that in the perception of the public at large, and to a major extent in reality, the police dog is not only personified by the German Shepherd, much more often than not the police dog is a German Shepherd Dog.

And for very good reason; at his best the German Shepherd is a marvelous animal, truly capable of police or military patrol service of the highest order, a faithful companion for the civilian and one of the most inspiring visual sights the hand of man has ever created.

In training my Bouviers over a quarter of a century most of my fellow trainers have had German Shepherds, and I have come to have enormous respect for this noble breed. Were I to train another sort of dog it would be a Shepherd or a Malinois, which is after all a Belgian Shepherd. So when I disparage and heap contempt on German Shepherd breeders and politicians, it is not out of a sense of competition, but rather anger and frustration rooted in love and respect for this noble breed.

In terms of numbers, the police dog is the German Shepherd. In Germany there have been more than 15,000 pups registered yearly, often substantially more, often over 30,000, while the other breeds, the Dobermans or Giant Schnauzers, have been mostly less than a thousand, most often much less. And this is only the tip of the iceberg, because all of these registered GSD pups are out of Schutzhund titled and tested stock while no other breed has such requirements, and most of these other breeds are producing soft, insecure, grotesque dogs every bit as bad as the Americans. Since in Germany only the GSD must be Schutzhund titled in order to be bred, on the sport fields his numerical predominance is much greater than even the large registration numbers would suggest.

It is true that the Belgians and the Dutch have a strong police canine heritage, based on the Malinois, a Belgian Shepherd, and earlier in the twentieth century the Bouvier des Flandres. And it is also true that the Malinois is coming on strong in every venue, giving the German Shepherd strong competition in every arena in which they are willing to maintain a presence. In the long run this is good for the German Shepherd as a breed, knowing that there is an alternative in the wings gives the Germans the incentive to maintain their heritage.

But Holland and Belgium are small countries, with many fewer immigrants in America to promote their native breeds. And these nations and breeds suffered grievously under German atrocities in two world conflicts. Belgium particularly was devastated, was at the epicenter of the actual combat in both wars, and canine breeding and training was at a tremendously reduced level well into the nineteen fifties.

It is certainly true that in the Netherlands, Belgium and France the Malinois is increasingly predominant on sport fields, but this is a more recent development and even in these nations GSD registrations far outstrip any of the other working breeds; in France there are almost as many GSD registrations as in Germany, and if current trends continue we could soon see more in France. In terms of popular perception, the Malinois is a relatively minor breed in France and indeed the entire world.

Another point might be to question the relevance of politics, canine or otherwise, for the police dog breeds, training and service. But this is naive, for politicians control every aspect of our lives, such as whether E collars are legal, which breeds are banned and where you can take and train your dog. Others might question how much real effect dog enthusiasts and canine organizations have on issues of public policy. But they are important, on several levels. In the first place entities such as the AKC and FCI take significant amounts of the money paid into the system to influence the national politicians. Some of the European national organizations aided in the banning of cropping and docking for instance. The fact of the matter is that AKC and the FCI, and their affiliated national and breed entities, do not represent the interests of the police style canine, will betray us as a matter of expediency whenever convenient, as in the ear cropping and docking in Europe. And many of the working oriented organizations such as the KNPV and the Ring limit the acceptable breeds by the simple device of maintaining a list of breeds eligible to participate. You may choose to ignore canine politics, but you can not escape living with the consequences.

Although this will focus on the American side of the Atlantic, as the situation in Europe was covered previously, there is much overlap in that the SV has been deeply entangled in American affairs for many years, because there are three times as many Shepherds in the United States as in Germany and because there are a group of Americans much more in resonance with the actual heritage of the GSD than the SV bureaucrats and show breeders, which is seen as a threat and has awakened within the SV the natural propensity of the German soul to control, dominate, manipulate and above all else profit.

Prior to the advent of the United Schutzhund Club of America, USCA, in 1979 the American working dog movement was seen as more or less harmless, irrelevant and impotent by the real players, the bureaucrats and show boys at the AKC, the American German Shepherd establishment and the Europeans with dogs to sell. Prior efforts had been a group of quaint Americans at NASA with their own rules and their own self appointed judges or groups totally subservient to the Europeans. And the perception was pretty much on target; I once saw a NASA judge allow a handler to put down a blanket for a Doberman on the long down in obedience so she would not get cold, or miss her blanket, and that was kind of characteristic of the organization.

Early in 1979 the Schutzhund movement in America was in shambles. The AKC had just slapped the GSDCA down hard for their tentative involvement in Schutzhund, forbidding all future association like you would chastise a child for using naughty words. The American based DVG activity was awash in confusion, recrimination and power struggles and NASA was basically just lame and irrelevant.

When as a result of this USCA came into existence in the fall of 1979 it sought and obtained affiliation with the mother club in Germany , the SV. This provided immediate legitimacy, international recognition of titles and official access to German judges both as teachers and to conduct trials. Thus from its inception Schutzhund USA was a German Shepherd breed club, and it was never any secret for it was spelled out in the constitution from the beginning.

In retrospect this was the watershed event, for USCA was destined to become much more than a dog training organization. It would emerge as much larger, much more relevant and much more resonant with the reason for the breed than the GSDCA, was to threaten the AKC in the only way they can ever really understand, money, and was to enmesh the German bureaucrats and canine politicians in a never ending international political morass.

The fact that the words German Shepherd do not appear in the name of the organization has had ramifications to this day. In a certain sense, this has been a little bit deceptive, for there was a need and desire to support those with other breeds, who have over all been about a third of the membership, and thus about a third of the incoming money. Thus there was the tendency to portray the organization as the big tent, the home for all people who just wanted to train their dogs.

While the national organization never quite made any overt effort to conceal its GSD nature, many local clubs promoted themselves as all breed oriented. This has sometimes generated anger and confusion over the years, as people who are drawn into an apparently all breed local club sometimes feel betrayed when they eventually discover that they are members of a national German Shepherd breed club. The perception of USCA as the big tent, the home for all people who just wanted to train their dogs, never had any basis in reality.

On a personal level, I have been a USCA member for over twenty five years, and this is the only canine organization I continue to believe in and support. There was a really rough patch in the leadership in the early nineties, the word crisis would not be inappropriate, but going forward I have admired the leadership for honesty, diligence and enthusiasm. The USCA judges program in particular has been an enormous benefit, bringing honesty, competence and a sportsman like attitude to the trial fields of America , something often not true of the German SV judges in all three areas.

In recognizing USCA the SV created a monster, for suddenly they had two children in America where ultimately only one could become blessed and the other thus declared a bastard and cut off to die. Forty years later this is still playing out, being cut off to die has turned out to be a long, drawn out and ugly process.

The German Shepherd Dog Club of America, the GSDCA, is perhaps the strangest and most self conflicted entity in all of the canine world, and that covers a whole lot of ground and an enormous amount of hypocrisy. Coming into existence early, in 1913, in a world basically ignorant of and vaguely hostile to civilian police style breeding and training, it was in conflict from the very beginning, trying to serve, placate and manipulate two masters, the German breed founders at that time very serious about work and the American Kennel Club fundamentally hostile to the very purpose of the breed. Thus the reality is an organization of deeply split personality, and thus fundamentally conflicted, self destructive and dangerous, a loose cannon on the deck of world wide canine politics. The GSDCA was, for the better part of the century, the ugly American of the Shepherd world, breeding soft, spooky dogs with extreme exaggeration in physique, that is the extreme angulation and slopping top line, to the point where these American Shepherds were virtually another breed.

In the nineteen eighties as I gradually became aware of the history of the GSD world my naive expectation was that, since the USCA was very serious about character and working functionality, the natural consequence would be for the SV to use this as a lever to bring America into line with the historical purpose of the German Shepherd as a serious police dog.

In this I was wrong in the most grievous sense. The fundamental error was in believing that the SV was a serious working dog organization, the legitimate heir to the legacy of von Stephanitz. But behind the facade this was no longer true, for in the big picture over the time span from the twenties to the eighties the GSDCA did not become transformed to something in resonance with the working heritage, but rather the SV itself had been subverted and corrupted, was behind the false exterior metamorphizing into a pet and show oriented entity in general and fundamental ways the German equivalent of the GSDCA.

All of the strife and conflict in the GSD world over the past thirty years can not be understood until this fundamental and counter intuitive fact is grasped. For as time moved forward, it became increasingly obvious that the rock, the foundation, was at its core and in its leadership corrupt, unfaithful to the dream of von Stephanitz.

In spite of the corruption at the top, the GSD has maintained its place as the premier working dog world wide because there are so many dogs, so many really good dogs, so many independent breeding communities. While the SV show dog elite took control, many grass roots Germans remained faithful and bred and trained the old way, according to the heritage. And there are significant GSD communities, working oriented sub cultures, such as the Czech lines, in Belgium and Holland and even in America .

Although there was never any real point to it, the GSDCA maintained membership in the international Shepherd community, that is the WUSV. By 1970 they had what amounted to a different breed, and there was very little practical contact; few imports, little use of German judges and no returning to the motherland to compete in either conformation or work. As the USCA came into the picture and increasingly wanted to participate in international affairs, send dogs to Europe to compete, the fact that WUSV membership was limited to one national entity per nation became a real sticking point.

The GSDCA quite naturally adapted the role of the dog in the manger, for although they were not in the spirit of von Stephanitz really a German Shepherd club at all, out of spite and opportunity for profit and aggrandizement for individuals they clung to their seat.

For USCA the real attraction was the ability to send teams to the FCI and world union international competitions. Much of the reason for the USCA support for the AWDF, for instance, was to gain FCI recognition and to some extent sidestep this, but this has not come to pass.

The relationship between the American GSDCA and the German mother club, the SV, has been one of crass convenience and advantage rather than shared ideals about abstractions such as the good of the breed. For much of this time the Americans have had the money and the numbers; because of the size of America there have been three to four German Shepherds bred in America for every one in Germany . Starting in the twenties many of the Siegers, male winners of the SV national conformation specialty, have come to America because the Americans were prosperous and had the money, and times were hard in a defeated Germany . During the second world war there was of course no contact, and it was the early fifties before the Germans began to reestablish their organizations. By this time the Americans were beginning to have ideas of their own and were blending in the imports rather than just emulating German trends.

Beginning in the sixties the American GSDCA show community was going its own way, virtually creating their own breed. While the rest of the world was to some extent gaining unity of type and culture through the world union, the WUSV, the GSDCA was a member in name only.

As Schutzhund began to gather momentum, the dilettantes and politicians high up in the SV and the GSDCA discovered a new common ground, or a common threat, for the USCA was in fact emerging as the advocate of the serious working Shepherd, putting the lie to both the GSDCA and the SV. So as with the strange bedfellows spirit of politicians everywhere, the GSDCA began to pretend an interest in working character and taking a more active role in international affairs.

In order to compete with USCA, in1982 the GSDCA spawned an affiliate "Working Dog Association," whose only real asset and leverage point was the WUSV membership of the GSDCA. This has led to a bizarre duel universe where the same organization on the one hand holds conformation championships, a national specialty, for the novel American variety of German Shepherd, which never brings in German Judges, and then puts on a WDA hat to run an entirely separate set of shows, which always use SV judges or a few American's trained and ordained by real Germans. And they both go on and on in their own other dimensional universes, oblivious to the absurdity of it all.

A primary motivation for the GSDCA was of course to gain control of USCA, force them into subservience, force them to go through their officers in dealing with the Germans, force them ultimately under the dictates of the AKC.

One fundamental issue was the composition of the American team which yearly goes to Europe to participate in the WUSV Schutzhund championship event. Originally this was under the auspices of USCA, in the time period when GSDCA more or less represented the conformation aspects and USCA the working events. But under the banner of unity GSDCA began to flex its muscle and demand control, resulting in a series of compromise solutions, usually involving some sort of split team with each organization having so many slots to fill. The result of course was USCA members participating in some sort of GSDCA qualification trial, since WDA really had very little in the way of serious trainers and competitors.

There have of course been an endless stream of noble sounding cant about "working together for the good of the breed." But the reality has been an escalating set of rules concerning which judges are eligible officiate at particular events and who is eligible to participate in activities of the competing organization. In the latest go round USCA members can not be concurrently WDA members.

The result of all of this is that only German SV judges are eligible to do all Schutzhund trials, which is exactly what the Germans want.

So USCA is going to remain a quasi legitimate part of the world shepherd community because that is exactly where the show oriented elements of the SV leadership want them. Sure, they will throw them a bone from time to time, they can send teams to the world union championships, or have some of their judges given SV status, but America is going to remain divided and weak as long as they are able to make it stick.

The overriding fact is that to be a full fledged player in the German Shepherd world it would be necessary for USCA to become a member of the FCI, which was a primary reason for Paul Maloy’s interest in the AWDF back in the nineteen eighties. But this was never really in the cards, for the one thing nobody in Europe is going to do is cross the AKC and risk all the money coming in from imported dogs people perceive as needing eligibility for AKC registration in order to be legitimate.

But real participation in either the WUSV or the FCI is only open to a single entity in any country and the GSDCA was there first. They don’t really care about either European organization, but they do want to keep USCA under their thumb, illegitimate as a real GSD entity.

The fact of the matter is, politically if not morally, The GSDCA has the upper hand, and shows precious little concern for either morality or the breed. The reality is that the SV politicians want to keep the American Shepherd community divided because that makes them easier to control and manipulate, and like European powers everywhere in their heart of hearts want colonies rather than partners.

So USCA is between the proverbial rock and hard place; in order to be a player on the world scene they would have to somehow merge with the GSDCA, but since the GSDCA does not really care it would be on their terms, which would mean repudiating everything they have ever stood for.