German Shepherd Police Dog
Heritage Repudiated by SV

Jim Engel, November, 2021

The iconic emergence of the German Shepherd at the dawn of the twentieth century established, defined, the police dog throughout the world. No breed could compete, no nation could resist. This prosperity persisted through two devastating European wars and the collapse of the German social order in the great depression of the 1930s; by any measure this was hands down the most successful, most predominant and most popular working breed ever.

But now this noble breed, this legacy of von Stephanitz, is in unrelenting decline, reduced to insipid, sterile mediocrity. The iconic standing among the German people is evaporating as annual registrations plummet by two thirds in less than a generation. This elite mystique—so powerful and enduring and yet so fragile—has incessantly eroded into the generic, even the trivial.

How can this be? Over past years there has been relentless decline in the purebred paradigm generally; the interest in canine exhibition as a prosaic middle class hobby, but that was never the essence of the German Shepherd culture and predominance. The Malinois is in ascendance, but this is consequence rather than cause. No other German breed is especially prospering, providing competition.

The lamentable reality is that this decline emanates from within, from the putative heirs of von Stephanitz, from ongoing, blatant, self-serving hypocrisy within the elite of the SV, the ornamental dog establishment, the German mother club. Their ultimate, emasculating, irredeemable sin was and is the repudiation of the police dog identity in the selfish pursuit of pet market money, the unrelenting propensity to worship at the altar of the gods of money and surreal, imaginary fame and glory.

This police dog persona was in the beginning the essence of the German Shepherd, what it meant to be a German Shepherd; denying this was, to their everlasting shame, denying everything, repudiating the legacy of the founders. On a more prosaic level this treachery was not only an abomination culturally, morally and ethically, it was self-serving, shortsighted and stupid in that it is leading to the demise of the golden goose, the source of the ongoing unearned and unmerited cash stream.

This SV denial and shame of their own legacy, the gift of von Stephanitz, is well documented in their web presence: SV Web Site

Nowhere are there references to police work, photos of protection exercises or the century of Schutzhund heritage, all expunged from their public persona. Note particularly that the reference on the lower left "The German Shepherd in service" is a broken link, goes nowhere, and has done so for months.

In repudiating the Schutzhund trial as the universal breeding prerequisite they have finally crossed the Rubicon. Is it not ironic that after so decisively prevailing over the FCI for international hegemony they squander their triumph, their heritage, on the banks of the Rubicon? Is the ethical and moral superiority of the SV ultimately to be only a perverse illusion, real power merely slipping from one set of grasping, corrupt opportunists to another? This precipitous decline of the ornamental lines always was inevitable, fool's gold, and the time has finally come to pay the piper. SV Repudiates von Stephanitz

But there is a hint, a glimmer, of a silver lining. The Euro court rulings of restraint of trade empowering the SV, and the precedent of RSV 2000, open the way to new, working oriented, structures which would finally result in working dog affairs in the hands of working dog people, worldwide. All that is standing in our way is the want of resolution and courage, the will to prevail. Who will step forward? Who has the courage? Is this heritage to slip away because so many cling so tenaciously to old, threadbare illusions? To dreams of sterile Sieger placements devoid of meaning and relevance, of world team places, marching into a stadium behind the flag, bought and paid for with dogs bred, trained and titled by others? Can we not be better than this?

Blunders

The SV has squandered their greatest asset, the aura of invincibility, through three fundamental blunders:

• Breeding and selecting for extreme angulation and top line slope to create the absurd toe dragging floating gait, surrendering agility, power, the ability to navigate the rough terrain of the real world, creating among other things an epidemic of career ending back injuries.
• Emasculation of the Schutzhund trial into IPO, thus ceding control of the historical test of working character, of the soul of what it means to be a German Shepherd, to the FCI, a show and pet oriented international organization passively hostile to the working culture. Incessant trivialization of the trial, and lowering of judging standards and especially decoy pressure in trials for the ornamental lines, is ongoing, unabated.
• Repudiation of the police dog identity in order to produce less intense, more docile dogs for sale into pet and companion homes. This was a profound misreading of the enormous surge in historical popularity, for the foundation of the enduring appeal of the German Shepherd was from the beginning the police dog persona, the machismo, the appeal of having a bit of excitement in an otherwise drab and mundane life. Those who want a Labrador Retriever are ultimately going to buy Labrador Retrievers, not dogs from an insipid, watered down former police breed.

Decline

This decline began slowly, imperceptibly, in the 1950s and 60s, with widening separation of the lines, with form driven by increasingly grotesque fashion rather than function, until the 1990s when the precipitous collapse began. Although not in the beginning a causative factor, the emergence in the Internet has facilitated and accelerated this process. Indeed, both the Malinois and the Internet emerged from obscurity in this era to profoundly transform the working dog world, a process whose consequences we see playing out yet today. None of this is coincidence.

The Malinois was present at the creation, the emergence of formal police patrol service in Ghent, Belgium in 1899. But the ruthless, unprovoked German invasion in 1914—with Belgium at the epicenter—and subsequent occupation cast this breed, and indeed the Belgian nation, into obscurity and decline which was to persist for most of a century. The Nazi blitzkrieg in the spring of 1940, and subsequent occupation, was even more brutal, even more onerous, bringing Belgian breeds generally to the edge of extinction. Is there not a note of irony in the Malinois, waiting in the wings for a century, emerging as the Shepherd has declined to inherit predominance in police and military service which the SV, in pursuit of pet dog popularity, has deliberately abandoned?

The purebred paradigm has from the beginning been firmly rooted in propaganda and mythology, which persists in the public mind long after the reality has faded. A prime example is the Doberman Pincher, which has played no prominent role in police or military service since the South Pacific campaign in the Second World War, seventy years ago, yet persists in mythology even today. As the emasculation of the show lines has gradually crept into public perception the foundation of the century old SV empire has begun to deteriorate, to decay from within.

Apologists tend to soft peddle the declining numbers, explain them away by demographics and social change, note that larger dogs are becoming more trouble and expensive to maintain, that the youth have been taken over by the social media, their smart phones. This has a certain ring of plausibility, but from the numbers it is clear that other robust breeds, such as the Rottweiler, have increased or maintained their popularity and the VDH as a whole is down by just 14 percent as compared to 67 percent for the GSD. This decline is not merely a transient fluctuation in the market place; it is a paradigm shift, a long term transformation in the public perception of the breed. This wound was self-inflicted.

To explore the depth of the folly inherent in the ornamental lines let us look to the words of the founder himself:

The principle of "never as the caricatures of Nature, the greatest of all teachers" as exemplified by the wolf, coyote and the original shepherd dog prototypes, German and Belgian alike, is fundamental. But what is the grotesque SV show dog of today if not an absurd caricature of nature?

The requirement "… of body, compacted and designed for the highest possible efficiency, spare and powerful…" was largely realized until the 1950s, but has now been abandoned in the quest for the ultimate floating trot. As for "quick turning and powers of endurance" these SV lines are anything but agile, would surely fail, and likely injure themselves, in any real world encounter requiring agility and power.

Crisis

Today the SV is in a state of profound crisis in terms of popularity, money and most fundamentally credibility and identity. This is why they are actively seeking, and achieving, marginalization of the FCI, establishment of the WUSV as the predominant world body to wield hegemony over national clubs outside the reach of the existing all breed canine establishment.

As an abstraction this is well and good, for control of the show dog dominated international establishment has played a principle role in the decline of serious working breeds. Had they sought to use an empowered and invigorated WUSV to close the gap between show and working lines, return to the foundation of von Stephanitz, it would have set the stage for a renaissance, a return to originating principles, a reestablishment of the German Shepherd as the preeminent police dog.

But they have not. The abandonment of the Schutzhund trial is a clear demonstration that control by the ornamental establishment is to go on in the same old way, more independence and control being nothing more than the freedom to go on plundering and profiting in perpetuity, extracting an unimpeded flow of cash and adulation.

Thirty years ago they could have staged such a transformation from a position of enormous prestige and power, and likely prevailed. But today they are reacting out of desperation, fear and weakness, trying to somehow escape from this fiasco of their own making.

Restoration

There are those who resist, who endure; a steadfast cadre of old style, hard line breeders and trainers carrying on a valiant, desperate rear guard action, but the extremes of angulation and top line slope have bled over even into these working lines, all too often causing crippling, career ending back injuries. These are the legitimate heirs of the noble heritage of von Stephanitz, and redemption, survival, depends on their fortitude, endurance and persistence; it is a heavy burden.

But individual breeders and trainers, no matter how hard core and steadfast, cannot in the long run sustain the breed; it is akin to shoveling sand against the tide. It has become utterly obvious that the system is broken, that the SV has led the breed down a blind alley with no way forward, evolved the show lines into banana backed monstrosities, increasingly physically unable to perform the historical work of the breed, police service. It is a fact that must be acknowledged as a prerequisite to recovery: the SV show lines have become the laughingstock of the entire working dog world.

The essential question is whether it can be fixed, or must there be revolution, regime change? Many are inherently conservative, cling to the hope that the SV can step back from the abyss, that they can somehow come to their senses and walk back this monstrosity of their own creation into something akin the immediate post WW II era, that there can be a gradual return to a more normal, historical physique. Even I had retained some hope of this, but the formal repudiation of the Schutzhund requirement is the last straw.

Today I have, reluctantly, come to believe that the problem is much too advanced and deeply embedded, that the only possible future for a viable German Shepherd is eradication of the show lines and rebuilding on the base of the existent working stock. This of course will not go over well with those whose kennels are based on the banana backs and whose world of prestige, prosperity and personal aggrandizement would collapse with the demise of the show lines. The alternative is formal separation into two breeds, recognition of the reality, allowing the working elements to take control of their own destiny. The 1963 establishment of the NVBK in Belgium, the bolting of the Malinois working people to form their own organization outside of St. Hubert, the Belgian FCI entity, is one model.

Insurrection

This is an enormously complex situation. The success of the WUSV in alleviating overweening FCI control and potentially moving toward a status as a single breed standalone alternative has taken political complexity, and the stakes of the game, to an entirely new level. The ramifications are likely to profoundly affect international canine affairs for decades to come, perhaps generations. Had the FCI predominated the WUSV would have been reduced to little more than a feckless venue for exchanging propaganda and gossip with marginal real influence, leaving the SV as just another breed club, no doubt under a very tight VDH leash, more or less protective custody, with very little room to maneuver.

But through Euro court rulings the SV has been empowered to establish much more direct control over the national German Shepard clubs worldwide. As this goes forward they will likely deal a severe, perhaps fatal, blow to the prestige, power and indeed survival of the FCI. If the various national FCI organizations relent they will have only seen the beginning, international breed specific alliances are likely to proliferate, emasculating the FCI. They can be expected to play hard ball, for bureaucrats fight for their personal position, security and perceived prestige above all else.

A standoff, less likely in light of SV court success, with many or all FCI nations having two GSD clubs, one a renegade loyal to the SV and the other under the auspices of the national FCI entity such as the Raad van Beheer in the Netherlands or St. Hubert in Belgium, would bring the worst of all possible worlds. There would be competing and conflicting registration systems, multiple sets of shows with different judges, possibly different standards and confusion in all of the other elements of a functioning canine infrastructure. It would bring chaos.

Prognostication

Today there is ongoing political intrigue in high places, deals to be made, compromises to work out. The end state is obscure, very difficult to project. One thing is certain: the working community, in spite of lip service, some subordinate leadership participation, has no real place at this table. Neither the FCI nor the SV, in the hands of show and pet elements, share our values, believe in or value serious working dogs. Any foreseeable faction will throw us under the bus on the least pretext, without ever looking back. Shall we yet again meekly stand by, hat in hand, awaiting whatever crumbs happen to fall from the table of the eventual victors? Or shall we grasp the opportunity to build tables of our own?

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this confrontation between the SV and FCI may offer the working community a last best chance to take control of our own destiny, to once and for all get out from under the onerous yoke of domination by conformation and pet elements. This is a once in a generation opportunity.

Today my long term expectation has become that the SV, in downplaying police character, has made a fatal blunder, has opened the door for the Malinois, waiting in the wings for a century, devastated by two world wars, virtually unknown. An out of the mainstream GSD working culture will likely come to predominate, eventually severing the German Shepherd even more irrevocably into two breeds.

Once the police dog image fades from public perception there will be little reason for SV or AKC style breeding and they will diminish in numbers, importance and prestige. Those who want larger, more robust, personable companions will gravitate to the Labrador and Golden retrievers or similar breeds.

In police and military service Malinois domination will be in ascendance, with German Shepherds from independent hard core breeders making substantial contributions. This will be increasingly free from show and pet line influence, that is the FCI, SV and AKC, which will be a good thing. Hopefully both the Malinois and working German Shepherd lines will prosper, compete on a performance basis, free of the malignant influence of the formal purebred establishment.

It is a bleak prospect, but a transformation necessary for survival of our working dog culture.

Jim Engel, Marengo    © Copyright November 2021

Background and Reference

SV Abandons Work Test for Breeding
House of von Stephanitz
Working Dog Organizations: Structure and Ongoing Conflict
Jack of All Trades?
Glossary of Organizations and Abreviations

Contact & Overview    Schutzhund Police Book Angel's Lair