ALSATIANS’ NEW NAME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 306, 28 December 1936, Page 11

ALSATIANS’ NEW NAME

GERMAN SHEPHERD DOGS ORIGIN OF THE BREED. After a good many years the Kennel Club Committee has authorised a change in the name of the Alsatian, writes the kennel correspondent of the London Times. A tentative step in the right direction was made when it was decided that the use of the words Wolf Dog should be discontinued. Being herding dogs, they nad less right, to that qualification than some of the French and Italian sheepdogs, whose duty it was at one time to protect the flofleks from wild animals. The formidable-looking Komondor in Hungary is still employed in this manner. The Kennel Club has acted wisely in making the change gradually. Perhaps in a few years the word Alsatian will disappear and the breed will be known here, as in other parts of the world, as German Shepherd Dogs. An abrupt decision, by bringing confusion into the public mind, might have damaged the breed.

People cling tenaciously to the old names. One often hears Scottish terriers called Aberdeens, although the association with the northern city

never had official recognition. For years after the Willoughby and Morrison strains of pugs had lost their idenity by inter-breeding one heard the terms used. When Lieutenant-Colonel J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, M.P., and other enterprising men who had been impressed with the cleverness of the German dogs on the European fronts, set about persuading the British public to adopt them, they must have spent anxious moments in search of a name that wou not offend our national susceptibilities. At last they decided on Alsatian, throwing in the Wolf Dog to make it more interesting. Some of their supporters, who had allowed their critical faculties to have a rest, set about finding justification for associating the dogs with Alsace. It was easy enough to prove that they were to be found there, just as they were to be seen all over Germany and in many parts of France. Some ingenious spirit went further than that, however, declaring that in 1140 B.C. (sic) Scottish monks settled in the Valley of Munster, built a monastery, and procured some sheepdogs from their own land, which, be-

ing crossed with native breeds, became the forerunners of the Alsatians. Thus, in a way, by establishing Alsatians here we were merely getting our own back again. The theory was so interesting that it has been revived again this year. Lest it should tempt anyone to make incursions into the realm or fancy, it may be as well to explain that this breed, so popular throughout the world, is not old. In a sense perhaps the Scotch collie has something to do with the genesis of the Alsatian. It was the success of the collie that, towards the end of the nineteenth century, impelled the Germans to produce a dog of their own that would be different from all others—v.hat the late Captain von Stephanitz described

as a "fancy dog,” having erect ears and preferably a resemblance to a wolf. Germany abounds in varieties of pastoral dogs, some of which have erect ears and are wolf-grey in colour. One can see in photographs of them a suggestion of the modern Alsatian, and the union of several of them gave the dog that has since blossomed into the modern Alsatian. Much of the improvement that has <made the breed so striking has come since hostilities ceased. Most of those that came earlier were not particularly attractive, looking like just common sheepdogs, but a few bought from a French kennel gave us definite adeas of the possibilities inherent in the breed. Frankly, though, those of us who studied them then had little idea of the sensation they were to create later on.