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Date Posted: 15:20:43 03/27/10 Sat
Author: Norman Epstein
Subject: Re: So what is the BB criteria for Breeding Boerboels now?
In reply to: RW 's message, "So what is the BB criteria for Breeding Boerboels now?" on 22:20:36 03/26/10 Fri

“ Does something exist to determine the abilities of an Boerboel so that one may have some sort of reference or template to allow sound decision making with his or hers breeding stock? Also what is considered over the top when it comes to drive? How is balance determined?"

Beyond its work/function of a farm dog, nothing now or will exist in the foreseeable future, to accurately measure those abilities. In lieu of work a breed specific test might go a long way in measuring those abilities but IMO that will never come to be because 95% of our breeders and the same percentage of our breed associations, for reasons peculiar to themselves, don’t want them. This community is at a cross road. Do we want to preserve our breed, or just the appearance of our breed? For 40 years the phenotype/standard has been selected for first by a very large majority of our breeders, because of that we must to come to grips with the fact that the Boerboel now is, for all intent and purpose, a show breed i.e., breed stock is selected* first* because they more closely mirrors our ever changing standard. It may be of note that breeding history has showed us that no, nada, not one, pure breed has improved using our selection process, but that fact has not even slowed our lemmings/breeders from running towards the edge of no return. When they get to the edge and look over they will see the many other failed pure breeds and probably most will be participating in a bench show or in our case an appraisal. Laura Sanborn wrote, “From a practical point of view, it’s irrelevant if for example, 0.01% or 0.001% of AKC show line GSD’s alive today is capable of doing demanding dual purpose police work. When abilities become that rare in a population, they are effectively but perhaps not theoretically gone”.

Another truism that we have pretended does not apply to the Boerboel is that in all living things, anything at all that is not supported by selection will degrade. Not all at once and in every individual at the same time, but degrade it will. Now you tell me what has the preponderance of this community been aggressively been selecting for and what have we not been aggressively selecting for. We (this community) by in large, have for 40 years not been selecting for health, vitality and function therefore they have degraded and will continue to degrade until our selection process changes. So I wouldn’t worry so much about breeding for too much drive or be overly concerned if .00001% of today’s breeders are selecting for a dog sport and because that, their selection will change the Boerboel for the worse when we, for the most part, have been doing that for the last 40 years.

If today the breeders of the show AKC German Shepherd Dog wanted to bring them back so that they would have the mental and physical capacities of the working GSD’s they don’t have within those millions of show dogs, enough examples to practically use to facilitate that change . It would be for them like creating a new breed. Theoretically it is possible but it would take 50 years of aggressive culling, selection and proofing of all breed stock. Therefore practically it is impossibility. Are we going to be in this same boat or are we there now.

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Replies:

  • Re: So what is the BB criteria for Breeding Boerboels now? -- Tony McCallum, 15:45:50 03/27/10 Sat
  • Re: So what is the BB criteria for Breeding Boerboels now? -- RW, 18:23:26 03/27/10 Sat
  • Re: So what is the BB criteria for Breeding Boerboels now? -- Damian, 21:45:53 03/27/10 Sat
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