Doberman Conformation and Bitework

I never said they weren't, but when19 out of 20 come thru and don't have an ounce of working ability in them, it's very tough for me to call them a working breed anymore. The nice one's are very nice working dogs. The problem is you have to search long and hard to find one. and it's been a while since one has come hard enough to even consider a neck injury regardless of the helper work. Not saying they can't exist, they're just very rare.

I don't think PD's have to search to hard for the breeds they use. They get dogs already fully trained from a breeder for police dogs and such. The ones we see, and own are (regardless of the breed) are pets, showing etc... Police, military and so on have specially bred dogs. Not the average family pet.

To some extent it depends on the department, but many PDs do have to search hard. The officers don't do the searching, typically it's who ever runs the k-9 unit who selects dogs. They usually have a third party who brings a selection of dogs to them and the k9 department evaluates. It's not uncommon for 10 dogs to come out for evaluations and all 10 be rejected.

They rarely - if ever - get fully trained dogs. The dogs might be started ~ basic obedience, some obstacles, maybe tug work and drive building as pups. The department usually gets them when they're about a year and a half to two years old and does the training from there.

You are right that all departments do it different. I was married to a cop. Although he wasn't part of the K9 unit. The head K9 officer here is also a police dog trainer. He does have a particular source for his dogs. (Where I don't know) He pairs the dog with the officer and they work together building a partnership. If the dept. has a K9 unit, they do have sources where their dogs come from. It dosn't always mean that there are dogs available all the time though.

Or a dutch!!!!

The guy I do decoy work for breeds dogs for protection work. He gets PD buying his dogs along with private sales. The private buyers often op for puppies where as the PD wants young adults who have been started on the suit but still need a lot of shaping. Usually between the ages of 6 months and 2 years. They don't really care to deal with the young puppies and beginning obedience.

It's not that they don't care to deal with it, it's that they want a young adult so they have a better idea of what they're getting. Also because once the dog is selected for the k9 unit, they have a limited amount of time to get him ready for the street.

There are k9 officers who will purchase a puppy on their own and raise him at home and when he's older and their current dog is being retired, the pup will become their new police dog.

it's not the diameter of the neck it's the strength of the muscles in it. look at sighthounds, long thing necks (in general) but they hit other animals at higher speeds than any other dog. their main neck injuries come after the impact not because of it. a skinny neck of strong well worked muscle will take fewer injuries than a fat neck of a couch potato.
the value of the long skinny neck is that they can bite the wrist of the hand choking them unless you get right against the jaw hinge. then they can still get the arm. unlike a bull or mastiff w/ their shorter necks if you get under the hinge you eliminate the bite threat. however any dog can be stopped by grabbing the bottom jaw and torqueing it toward the dogs chest. i know all the PP trainer experts are going to say BS but i've got the scars to prove what i'm saying (mostly on the right hand & arm). where the bull & mastiff shine is pain tolerance, heart & thrashing. they can sling you around much better than the sheperds & dobes which does A LOT of tearing damage to the muscles.

exactly, they want a dog that has it's health and hips tested, they want a dog that has mostly matured into its adult working drives and can be tested, have it's training finished, paired with a handler and put on the street. They aren't waiting for brains and bodies to mature. They don't have the luxery of time or money. 12 months minimum I'd say more like 15-18 months is ideal, but there's always exceptions.

All great replies, thanks.

Pops, I was thinking of sighthounds when I asked the question. I wondered why they didn't breed shepherds with a more sighthound-ish body, they would be faster and harder hitting. You could use them for catching whatever you liked- bunnies coyotes, people . My first idea was that the neck wouldn't be able to take hitting something so big with such speed, but then I looked at the dobes with thin necks. I guess to have the same mass to slow someone down you'd have to have a larger, lankier more gangly dog vs something nice and compact.

Never really thought the reach, but that is a really good point.

Wouldn't that simply be a Mal? especially if you look at the taller, leggier ones

Oc, you show me a mal with a body like this and I'm sold, lol




They're skinny but just not the same. Am I being put off by the hair? I don't know.

Here is a KNPV dog, with a build that is pretty conistant with what I've seen in mals in real life and in pics:


At any rate this is nothing more than some fantasy- at this point anyways, I'm in no way inclined to re-invent or revolutionize anything. Just thought I'd make that clear

:lol-sign:

^That^ is not a mal.

I wish wish wish I had a picture of Max the Mal before he got sold....he was a bit extreme on leg for a Mal but is probably exactly what you are picturing in your mind. Very stream-lined and every bit of his muscle was rock solid. Keep in mind, there is a lot of dutch/mal crossings and in US/Canada Pit/Mals crossed back to Mals seem to be growing more and more in popularity. There's a registered UKC red-nosed Mal that competes in sport dog who has very short coat. Hmmmmm.... a red-nosed Mal with a short coat, eh? Don't get me wrong this dog is FABULOUS! But, he is no way all Mal.

That looks like a Dutch.

OC, a "tall leggy Mal" is not a good one. Mals are actually pretty small dogs, 50-60lbs is pretty normal, while some of the males can get bigger, most of the working ones are bred smaller for quickness and agility. Same with the working line GSDs, it's not unusual to find males at the smaller end of the standard. One K9 cop I know has a female GSD as his partner, and she's not much more than 50lbs. On the other hand, my friend who is a director of K9 for his dept, likes bigger ones like Gunnar, who is right at 90lbs- he says that a Mal or smaller GSD will go in a car window and bite someone, but a bigger one will actually pull the guy out. Last night I was playing tug with Gunnar. I was sitting in my recliner- a big chair- and he was off to the side. He pulled me so hard that my chair started to tip over. That's 250lbs of me plus probably 100lbs of chair, moved with relative ease.

I think how hard they hit has 2 factors- speed and mass. A bigger dog might not be as fast but his mass is going to put you down. I haven't seen a smaller dog knock anyone down, but they can hit with gusto. I guess a 3rd factor would be breed, because some dogs hit differently- Rotties that I've seen, don't come in high, and when they bite, they drop and use their weight and size to pull you down.

Dan, I agree with you. I wasn't Max was my preference in type just that "leggy Mals" do exist and may fit the description is dreaming about

I was also going to mention in my post above that not all dog breeds are meant to have "beefy" muscling but it doesn't mean they cant run as fast or have as much endurance. Take a look at BCs. They certainly aren't beefy by any standard but they can still be ripped to a T. Mals are also ones that aren't really meant to have muscles bulging out all over the place but that doesn't mean they're slower or get tired quicker.

I've seen small dogs knock down helpers. It's very impressive. Tyr, who is about 55 pounds can almost do it. He can knock people off balance quite well, but not off their feet. A lot has to do with where they hit too. Mals often leap off the ground and have their front feet extended, so they not only bite, but they also slam you with their feet. The feet push you back while the bite pulls you forward. Tyr probably could knock someone down if he had a little more confidence to get off the ground a bit more.

LMAO!! I can't imagine a slow or a tired mal.

:lol-sign: :rofl1: My point exactly

Lol I know it isn't a mal it's a KNPV dog so who knows what it is.

I know there are registered Dutch shepherds (with the FCI?) but I also heard that in a litter, the fawns were called Mals and the brindles called Dutch shepherds. Anyone know the legitimacy of that?

Yeah, not my cup of tea, at least not now.

Also, for your interest a Dutch shepherd x GSD that I happened across. It is a muddied up bicolor or does it have some brindling on its paws? Wish

Some breeders might, some might not.

There is a lot of cross breeding of dutchies and mals, but the ones I've seen have all been called dutchies, even if they're half mal, they're not called dutchX. The people doing that are trying to get good working stuff regardless of purebred or not.

The history of the breeds is a bit confusing ~ different sources tell it differently. There may have been a time when dutchies and belgians were all part of the same breed before the brindles were separated into dutchies.

I've heard some people claim that the dutchies ended up being pretty poor working dogs until the mals were brought into the lines and other people claim that a full blooded dutchie is much better than the best of mals...so...politics, personal likes and dislikes, egos...idk. A lot of different information floating around though.

Let me choose between a couple different breeders of Mal's, dutchies, and GSD's and I can find 3 similar working dogs. They all have a lot of common