It’s that time of year again, the beginning of fall and it’s impending holiday season. For us this is a time of planning and consideration of how (and if really) we will move the program forward in the coming year.
When I was more influenced by titles these plans were easier, we just bred these titles to those titles, checked for pedigree compatibility, and felt good about that.
Now that I’m not longer considering titles in my breeding decisions and have in general lost all faith in the direction of the breed in both working and show lines I can’t simply emulate what breed leaders and the WUSV tell me are the current goals for the breed because those goals no longer interest me or promise an improvement in the breed or my program.
We have designed our own in house system of trait evaluation that has been working really well thus far at increasing desired traits and decreasing less desired traits. We have designed a detailed behavioral observation form for each of our dogs, to help us track behavioral traits and hopefully manage or prevent the heritable maladaptive and extreme behavior now ubiquitous in the working lines in our program.
This has been a super handy tool for really thinking about each dogs measurable traits (like height, weight, color) and also those traits ideally included on a breed survey (but often not) or even more importantly the traits that are actually important predictors of the dog's long term behavior and temperament. We wanted to be able to identify a variety of traits for each dog, firstly so that we can be making the best breeding choices we can, and secondly so that those who are getting dogs from us can have some real and tangible idea of what we are talking about when we describe our dogs instead of just copping out with slang and labels (like "high drive" or "off button" or "aloof") that really nobody agrees on.
Sample:
in house trait description system
We have added a complete set of spinal x rays, evaluated through OFA, to hopefully keep the spinal deformity ubiquitous in the show lines out of our program despite it’s prevalence in all the modern bloodline options.
We have added several outside lines in the last 10 years, most of these imported dogs and pedigrees were washed out of the program because they did not meet our standards for health, temperament, or behavior. Some have stayed and brought wonderful traits, even improvements, such as Kiro v Vierra and Jax Jr. z Hartamy who have both brought some great traits to the program.
Hopefully these systems of internal checks and balances will help us manage newly added modern bloodlines in our program while moving our pedigree’s forward with the structural, health, and behavioral qualities we and our clients expect in our dogs.
While the State of the Breed isn’t the focus of this annual audit of our program we also can’t really make far reaching plans without considering the state of the breed. At present the population of the breed is decreasing worldwide, most dramatically in Germany itself, and populations seem pretty stable in Asia and parts of the middle east where the breed is currently growing in popularity. The decrease in population and registrations is undoubtedly in large part due to the extreme structure in the show line dogs and the extreme behavior in the working lines. Both are off putting to most GSD lovers and they are expressing this displeasure by pulling their support from the breed. Decreasing populations have led to far fewer dogs, and the extinction of many bloodlines, leading to some symptoms of inbreeding depression in the breed including: Shorter average lifespan due to premature death from cancers (some previously rare in the breed like bone cancer), increased bloat-GDV deaths including some notable top producing males due to decreased body depth/width, smaller litter sizes, decreased libido, increased misses, and an increase in congenital defects in some lines (mega esophagus, EPI, persistent right aortic arch). These signs of inbreeding depression are not ubiquitous, yet, and are instead a warning to breed lovers that we must take seriously the work of increasing genetic diversity, even as our breed is still thought of as a populous breed. But population doesn’t matter much when all the dogs are so closely related and stem from only about 6 bloodlines.
So, with all that in mind we have made our plans for next year, conservative plans, for 2 litters from our highest priority females (Merreigh and Narada) both of whom will be bred in house to Ursus and Frankeigh respectively.
These litters will move forward two important but endangered lines in our program.
Merreigh is the sole representative of the Luna - T Arrow route to Eyleen so her genetics will hopefully move forward through a daughter sired by Ursus. This litter will be our highest priority this year.
Expecting beautiful, happy, and enthusiastic adventure buddy, lite sport prospects, UKC conformation prospects, who will make devoted and delightful family companions. Black and red saddles and blankets in stock coat. Merreigh is due in heat in spring of 2026. Give us a shout if a black and red beauty is in your plans for next year so we can add you to the list.
Narada is the only Zap daughter, though Zap’s legacy as our path via Omen to Gibsy is assured through her sons Ursus and Ultimo, we still very much want a Narada daughter and we hope to get one sired by Frankeigh, as he has been an outstanding producer and is a good match for Spark.
Rambo is nearing retirement age, and his daughters now fill our breeding program! If you have wanted a Rambo kid, now is the time! He has produced more OFA progeny than most of our producers ever do and we are super happy with the health, temperament, and breed qualities of his progeny. Spark is such a wonderful dog, one of our generation of Kiro daughters, she brings his outgoing and social disposition, confidence, and adaptability along with her. We can’t wait to see what she produces.
We are expecting more black and red beauties from this litter but Spark does carry recessive black so if you have been hoping for a solid black from our program this is a great opportunity to get on the list for one. Both long coat and stock coat are possible, as well as black factored black and reds. Excellent for adventure buddies, sport and UKC show prospects, and as always, delightful companions for GSD lovers of all types.
If Ursus’s first crop of puppies is any indication we can expect he will continue to produce exceptionally well with our Rambo and Kiro line daughters. That means we will need to start thinking about and planning for a male to bred to our expected line up of Ursus daughters. This next generation stud dog will be needed in two to three years, so believe it or not we are planning now! It’s unlikely we will purchase a prospect, given how many stud prospects we have washed from our program in the last few years, I expect we will try to make our own Next Generation Stud Dog using Iveigh as her line is not present in any of our current motherline producers. This means we will be shopping for an outside male for Iveigh. We are shopping for a German show line male, ideally grey, with an excellent temperament and moderate structure. I expect this breeding will take place this year, because we know breeding to outside males is less likely to result in a pregnancy and so we may need to bred her a couple times to get the male we want.
I’ll post information on the male as soon as one is selected but keep this in mind if you have been wanting an outside bloodline on an Austerlitz puppy!
As always, once plans are finalized you can find them on the Planned Breedings page of the website. Please let us know in early 2026 if you are ready to commit to a puppy, so we can add you to the list!
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