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!