Keep a good mover

German Pinscher should have a quadratic relation in the body – but we see more and more long backs and long loin.
How can we keep a good mover in a short square body … short neck… …. Can we?
I think so – when it comes to the back – the shortening of the GPs neck…. On the other hand … not so good!

Body length / height; body contour into a square, ie. a horizontal line across the back, together with vertical lines through the shoulder joint and the bump on his leg (the end of the hip bone) to form a square.

Chest depth / height;. The torso should rest on sturdy, straight legs. Withers: Pronounced. Spine, including lumbar spine, should be short, steady, straight, broad and strongly muscled.

Croup slightly sloping, broad and slightly arched. Chest deep, reaching to the elbows. Chest depth should be half the height at the withers. Forchest well developed. Ribs arched and not barrel-shaped and reach far back.

On judges conference they talked the problem with short torsoribbs- not deep, but the length. The danger here lies in the protecting of the the chest and thus exposed organs.

The belly must be elegant curved upwards - absolutely not involved. Flanks shallow, smooth and easily carried. Tailset should not be noticeable.

A beautiful arched neck and a short, strong back with clear whiter that slightly slopes towards the cross helps to give the GP a beautiful silhouette that clearly combines both power and elegance.

A GP should have a long, round, strong, muscular and dry neck - no loose skin

Long muscular neck is of crucial importance for the overall big picture, when it comes to the dog's anatomy. The length and position have a major impact on the front movement anyhow ….

At relatively low head carriage, the upper arm muscle is optimal in its working …. And in angle and can, through its attachment affecting front leg with great force.

At an excessively high carriage head with back bent neck the dog tend to obtain a tripping foreleg action.

When we show our dogs, in my opinion, the dogs that have learned to run in front of handler often reaching a much better movement. They can find their own rhythm and therefor run in their natural trot.

Wrong positioned shoulder and bad front???

One of the most common errors of the GP you see in the show ring in Sweden today is, in my opinion a wrong positioned shoulder.

One can clearly see it when the dog takes an "alert" on-toe-posed in the show ring for stacking. A properly built dog does not need any correction in the standing, they balance the body by itself properly - ie it allows the most of the weight of the body resting on the front legs, while the hind legs are wide apart, positioned slightly behind the body.
The position of the shoulder also obviously plays a big role in how the dog's movements look like. In order to enable the dog to take long, so-called ground-covering step, with front and rear the shoulders must be well laid back.

In the breeders meeting, earlier this year this was one of the things we did take a deeper look at.
Dog by dog ….
How do one see if the dog has a correct shoulderangle?
So what makes a good front? How do one determent if the dog has a correct front?
Feel your way, look after the dog's shoulder blades (skulderblad). Then take out the point at the top of the shoulderblade (see illustration below).
Look after the elbow and draw an imaginary line vertically inside your head from the shoulder and down.
If you find the elbow in the same line, the shoulder is what the breed standard calls correctly laid back.
The elbows should fit tightly to the dogs chest, which should be deep enough to go below the elbows.

If this is what kind you find – you have a perfectly designed front in your GP!

Below Vegas on the move - moving with correct movement ....

In our GPstandard it stats that the breed also shall have a straight, slightly sloping topline, and it is something that is difficult to obtain with a poor, straight and angled incomplete composite front.
What's happening here - as we often see in the show ring is that the GP walks on “two tracks” with his legs and either bend the back and/or goes a bit diagonal.

However, there are one things that can fix having a bad "front" and make the dog move around fairly well. That is "hanging" the dog up on the leash as it moves, goes, and thus barely touching the ground with their front legs – this makes the dog not in need of having any length of advancement in front at all!
One more thing can get a "bad shoulder" dog to move around ok - that the dog has equilibrium, is just as bad in front as in rear. When both "parts" have the same operating capacity usually the dog holds up ok in the middle anyway.
The GP should have a ground cover pattern in its movement - if the dog is to fulfill its frontmovement more than we need to let them lower their head slightly in the movement. To show the dog with the head borne abnormally high in a too upright leash, I admit often look very neat, but really gives a completely wrong movement schedule for the GP.
You may even occasionally experience that a correct fronted dog looks long in the back.

But it is to be "fooled" a bit! The dog with the correct neck, where the neck meets the back of a gentle hill (number 30 at the ill. bellow) , looks sometimes a bit long because you cannot directly, precisely point to where the back starts and how everything hangs together.
With the dog, having a poor, bad neck, setting in witters, it is however easier to determine where the back begins. There is a clear point, which looks like a large L, where the neck meets the back early.

Do you have planes on breeding? Let your dog be used in a combination?
Read through the standards, consider what the "disired" anatomy of the GP means for your breeding tanks.
Remember the German Pinscher should be strong, powerful and able to move effectively and must be balanced throughout.

Therefore it is very important for the dog's overall balance with a good front and a correct placed shoulder!

Avelsdjurets egna avelsval ......

Det finns ett stort intresse hos forskare för att ta reda på hur gener påverkar valet av partners och dess preferenser. Det finns en hypotes som säger att hanar med flera heterozygoter (gener) är de som föredras av tiken naturligt, då de teoretiskt har en större sannolikhet att få en mer heterozygot avkomma.
Vad hypotesen egentligen beskriver är att hanar med större variation av gener får lättare att skaffa avkomma än de som har en mindre variation av sina gener.

I vår renrasiga avel får hundarna själva sällan välja partner när det blir dags att skaffa avkomma, det är istället vi som uppfödare som får avgöra detta. Kunskapen kring genetik och för vilken betydelsen släktskap och hur inavlade avelsdjuren själva är skiftar säkert en hel del mellan olika uppfödare. Det handlar om linjeintresse, kontakter och  - kanske först och främst historiskt intresse för rasen.
Sedan kan man även, om man ser man det ur et historiskt perspektiv se hur det ibland snarare ansetts som en merit om avelsdjuren har mycket släktskap gemensamt och många träffpunkter genetiskt.

Flera hundraser har idag en ökad fertilitetsproblematik, hanarna är inte intresserade av att para sig med den tik som de valts ut för, i andra fall så är inte honan intresserad av att släppa till.
Man kan behöva en omparning mellan avelsdjur på nästföljande löp när resultatet varit att tiken gått tom.
Ibland paras en tik om och om igen utan önskat resultat – dvs valpar!

Sedan finns det de som, lite retligt tvingats gå genom våndan med tjuvparning där man ofta upplever att det leder till …. Vad vi kan kalla det oönskat resultat alltså valpar.
Jag vill inte alls dra parallellen med naturligt val eller naturliga avstående avelsdjur för långt - för visst finns det ju andra faktorer som man måste ha i åtanken så som att tjuvparningarna oftare sker när tiken är som mest mottaglig.

Jag har fått ta del av en studie kring detta - kommer sätta mig in i detta lite mer.

Jag tycker ett spännande ämne och .... det är ändå intressant att fundera på HUR pass mycket lukten av den genetiska sammansättning hos den hane man väljer ut till sin tik faktiskt kan påverka hur pass intressant denne är för tiken.

Worth rethinking once more ......

THE DOG SENSES

The dog has five senses and they are more or less developed.The senses are: smell, hearing, sight, touch and taste
The sense of smell is the most important sense for the dog.

We humans are not even close to its capacity. The dog has about 200 million scent receptors compared to 5 million for us.
Olfactory signals are sent directly to the limbic system of the brain where the center of the emotions are, which in turn triggers emotions and memories.


The dog, often prefer walking with its nose in the ground – and when they are looking to find partners and to identify other individuals it’s the best way. You could say that they are reading of their surroundings.

Even the hearings in dogs are very good and a normal dog has a hearing which is four times better than us humans. The dog has the ability to hear high frequency sounds that we humans cannot. It is an ability they needed when they were wild because they lived a lot of rodents and therefore was able to locate them more easily.
The dogs that have erected ears can target both ears to the sound source without the need to move the head and in this way they can hear very soft sounds. The good hearing can be used to detect such as enemies or locate prey above and below ground.

Since the dog lives as social beings in groups, the tactile feeling, touching is an important part of their communication and signals. Touching various parts of the body have their own importance and are developed from birth and when interacting with litterbrothers and sisters. However, the dog is somewhat less sensitive to pain than humans but it is mainly due to the fact that we humans often react because we think it will hurt - and already has "stimulated" signals for “pain coming”.

As for the sight, however, the dog has difficulty to see and get a sharp focus on the things that are stagnant - compared to us humans. Things, animals and people that are in motion, they have very easy to see "even if in a bit of a blur" and then also at a very long distances. The dog also has a very wide angle on the vision and when you experience that the dog momently perceive what is happening behind them - they do.

The different breeds ability to see well vary in their characteristics. Greyhounds have extremely good eyesight as they hunt and are dependent in it. The sheepdog has been breed with this in mind - since they must have good eyesight to be able to understand handsignals from the owner on a kilometer distends.

The sense of taste is not as well developed in the dogs senses - we know as much as it distinguishes between different flavors, but otherwise this sense is really of secondary importance to the dogs survival.

Sure, they get used to certain foods and enjoy it. And yes, there are dogs who are connoisseurs and rejects some dishes. But it's actually not the dog's fault, more our for giving in to it …..

The dog´s communication, dog's signals

Communication is originally a latin word that means something like common, mutual exchange, communication and take part of. Having the ability to convey itself is incredibly important for the dog's survival. Even newborn puppies communicate with the mother by signals - for food, warmth, contact, unease, pleasure, etc..

Picture taken by Mari - owner of smiling Gonzo

For the dog's part, it is impossible to learn to understand more than a few individual words and the meaning of the same in our spoken proverbs. Instead the focus of understanding from the dog's side is that we “unconsciously” uses signal transmitting by our body language that interprets by the dog.

It is therefore our responsibility, as the owner is to learn how to interpret with our dog's communications agency - the dog's signals.

What is a signal?
As soon as the dog meets other individuals, they begin to communicate by sending out different signals. A signal can be explained simply as a stimulus from one individual that affects the behavior of the receiving individual.

Head movements, positions and movements of ears, tail, sounds, urination, etc. are all examples of different signal.

The signals are the language for the animals - their means of communication and the path to socialization with their environment. The language is depending on what the sender can send out and what the receiver can receive and, of course, how they are perceived and interpreted.

The ideal transmitter

Different breeds often have different difficulty reading each other. For an example the German Pinscher can have difficulty reading the signals of a pug, the Briard and breed of boxers. They sent out signals with their black squashed face, long black coat … sometimes more or less concealing the tail – or how about the breed that have a twist on the tail and so on. The ideal transmitter should look like the wolf- the dog´s ancestors: white cheeks, black lips, selected drawings on their face, bushy tail with a pronounced "dump", standing ears and so on. Any deviation from the archetype complicates communication - and thus the  interpretation of signals.

Dogs, however, are great in having so big social learning skills, which include that they can learn what to look for in such dogs as boxer, pug, puli, or Bulldog. The more socializing - meeting different breeds the dog gets while growing up, the easier it may be for them to communicate –interphase readable signals of other races.

Visual signals

The visual signals are the ones the dog perceives by sight, ie. the eye.
Often we people have big difficulties to interpret the signals from the dog. This is because the dog is so incredibly fast in their signal shifting, but with practice we can at least improve our ability.

Are you interested in learning more about your dog's signals, you can start by carefully studying them in their meeting/interaction with other dogs. Look at the tail, ears, movement

etc.. The dominant, confident dog walking stiff, high tail carriage and forward-facing ears are fairly easy to recognize. Even so the dog with a more hunched posture, low tail and ears laid back. The many stages between these two are so mutts harder to understand and, as I said before we often do not have time to interpit, read them.

Acoustic signals

All individual dogs sounds different, but the language is the same. A narrow head gives an outstanding penetrating sound than the large and heavy. The dog has a fairly limited number of sounds: whining, screaming, shall, growl, howl, yawn, groan, sigh and a few variations between them. Because of the many links between the various types of sounds it still becomes a pretty good repertoire of the individual dog.

Chemical signals

Urinating fills an important social function for our dogs. Urine and feces serves the purpose of leaving messages between animals. Males mark with their urine a territory.

If you go the same round every day with your dog, you will discover soon that the dog is happy to urinate in the same places every day. It gives it a kind of a  "home feeling".

It has been found that these messages are likely to include answers of: individuality, gender (male - female), sexual maturation, heat (the bitch smells different in different phases of rennet).
 The recipients of these signals respond differently depending on which message
submitted.  You can even some time see a dog that is eager to go the other way if someone was there before that he fears. When two dogs meet the sniff careful over each other, everything from the face, corners of the mouth, anus, and genitals. The dog's body secretes odors are important to communication.

The answer, as too what the emptying of the anal sacks are messaging has yet to be fully understood, but it is believed that there is a danger signal / fear the dog indicates that "here something nasty happened".

Tactile signals

Finally, we come to the tactile signals. Surely your GP often comes and put the muzzle on your lap or jumps up with you on the couch and his eyes asking to be scratched and pampered. The tactile signals are important for contact between flock mates. It also includes "kisses", "bumping away at each other," putting a paw on the friend "and so on.

Study your dog

If you add all these signals together that we now only briefly reviewed, you will discover the enormous amount of language the dog actually has. It is a delightful experience to own a dog and fascinating to study its language, its signals. By studying your dog, you learn a lot. The exchange between you and your dog is greater if you only learn a very small amount, some few signals.

We can have a richer language and a greater understanding of our dog just by studying its signals. Dogs never really conceal their emotions and are real chatterboxes and when you learn to interpret them, you'll be surprised how well they speak!

Hundens kommunikation, hundens signaler

Kommunikation är från början ett latinskt ord som betyder ungefär gemensam, ömsesidigt utbyte, meddelande, få ta del av. Att ha förmåga att förmedla sig är otroligt viktigt för hundens överlevnad. Till och med små nyfödda valpar meddelar sig till mamma genom signaler – för mat, värme, oro, olust, välbehag osv.

För hundens del är det en omöjlighet att lära sig förstå mer än enskilda ord och betydelsen av densamma i vårat talade ordspråk. Tyngdpunkten av förståelsen från hundens sida ligger i att vi, omedvetet använder oss av ett signalsändande kroppsspråk som hunden tolkar.

Det ligger alltså på vårt ansvar, som ägare att lära oss tolka hundens kommunikations förmedling – hundens signaler.

Vad är en signal?
Så fort hundar möter andra individer börjar de kommunicera genom att sända ut olika sorters signaler. En signal kan enkelt förklaras som en retning från en individ som påverkar beteendet hos en annan individ.

Huvudets rörelser, öronens hållning och rörelser, svansföring, läten, urinerande m.m. är alla exempel på olika sorters signaler.

Signalerna är djurens språk - deras kommunikationssätt och väg till socialisering med omgivningen. Språket är bl.a. beroende av vad sändaren kan sända ut och vad mottagaren
kan ta emot och, självklart hur de uppfattas och tolkas.

Den perfekta sändaren
Olika raser har olika svårt att läsa av varandra. En pinscher kan t.ex. ha
svårt att läsa av en mops, briard eller en boxers utskickade signaler - svart
hoptryckt ansikte, lång svart päls oms döljer, knorr på svans osv. Den perfekta sändaren bör se ut som hundens anfader vargen: vita kinder, svarta läppar, markerade teckningar i ansiktet, buskig svans med markerad "tipp", stående öron osv. Alla avsteg från den urtypen försvårar kommunikationen – och därmed tolkningen av signalerna.

Hundar har emellertid en stor social inlärningsförmåga, vilket bl.a. innebär att de kan lära sig vad de skall titta efter hos t.ex. en boxer, mops, puli eller bulldogg. Ju flera olika raser hunden får träffa under sin uppväxttid, ju lättare får den att avläsa andra rasers signaler.

Visuella signaler
De visuella signalerna är de som hunden uppfattar med synen, dvs. blotta ögat.
Ofta har vi människor svårt att tolka rätt eftersom hunden är så otroligt snabb i
sina skiftningar, men med träning kan vi i alla fall förbättra vår förmåga.

Är du intresserad att lära mera om just din hunds signaler, kan du börja med att
noggrant studera den vid möte med andra hundar. Titta på svans, öron, gång
osv. Den dominanta, självsäkra hundens stela gång, höga svansföring och framåtriktade öron är ganska lätt att känna igen. Även den underlägsnes mer hopkrupna kroppshållning, låga svans och bakåt lagda öron. De många stadierna mellan dessa två är svårare att uppfatta och, som sagt innan vi hinner ofta inte avläsa dem.

Akustiska signaler
Alla hundar låter olika, men språket är detsamma. Ett smalt huvud ger ett gällare skall än ett stort och tungt. Hunden har ett ganska begränsat antal läten: gnäll, skrik, skall, morr, yl, gäsp, stön, suck och några till. På grund av de många övergångarna mellan de olika lätes typerna blir repertoaren hos den enskilda hunden ändå ganska stor.

Kemiska signaler
Urinerandet har en viktig social funktion. Urin och avföring fungerar som meddelanden djur emellan. Hanhunden markerar med sin urin reviret.
Går man samma runda varje dag med sin hund, upptäcker man snart att hunden gärna urinerar på samma ställen varje dag. Det ger den en sorts "hemkänsla".
Man har kunnat konstatera att dessa meddelanden sannolikt innehåller: individualitet, kön (hane - tik), könsmognad, löpning (tiken doftar olika under olika stadier av löpet).
Mottagaren av dessa signaler reagerar olika beroende på vilket meddelande
som lämnats. T.ex. kan en hund vilja gå åt andra hållet om det var någon där innan som
han är rädd för. När två hundar möts luktar de noga av varandra, allt från ansiktet, mungipor,
analöppning, könsorgan. Hundens kropp utsöndrar dofter som är viktiga för
kommunikationen. Vad tömning av analsäckarna har för meddelande har ännu
inte helt blivit klarlagt, men man tror att det är en signal för fara/rädsla hunden markerar att "här hände något otäckt".

Taktila signaler
Slutligen har vi kommit till de taktila signalerna. Säkert har din hund någon gång kommit och lagt nosen i ditt knä eller krupit upp hos dig i soffan och med ögonen bett om att få bli kliad, omklappad och ompysslad. De taktila signalerna är viktiga för kontakten mellan flockkompisar. Hit hör också "pussar", "nagga på varandra", lägga tassen på kompisen" osv.

Studera din hund
Om man lägger samman alla dessa signaler som vi nu endast kortfattat gått igenom, upptäcker man vilket enormt stort språk hunden faktiskt har. Det är en härlig erfarenhet att äga hund och fascinerande att studera dess språk, dess signaler. Genom att studera din hund lär du dig mycket. Utbytet er emellan blir större om du så endast lär dig några få signaler.

Vi kan få ett rikare språk och en större förståelse för vår hund bara genom att studera dess signaler. Hundar döljer egentligen aldrig sina känslor och är riktiga pratkvarnar och när du lär dig tyda dem kommer du bli förvånade över hur väl de talar!