[ SHOWGSD-L ] Those were the days my friends....
- From: Barbara Galasso <uwish@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:12:03 -0500
I picked up an old Review randomly from a box of many and the issue is
April 1984. Among all the many articles on health, training, letters to
the editor, the President's page, the cute "Ruthie" cartoon and a great
critique by Barbara Amidon who had just judged the bitches at the
previous National, there was a wonderful article on the Fran-Jo kennels
written by Linda Kofstad. This is something that I wanted to
re-introduce to the Review (interviewing breeders/handlers/judges) and
my idea was presented to Gail. I already had my two first breeders
picked out for that. Hopefully we'll still be able to put those
interviews together. Anyway, to the Fran-Jo interview. I'm sure not
too many people have that issue handy to look at it, and some of you
weren't even around then. It was extremely well done for the education
it brought to the reader about this ground breaking kennel, but also
with a lot of honesty on the Fords part about answering the questions
about their famous dogs. They talked about the health (or lack of it)
in some of their lines, what to breed to their dogs and what they felt
their dogs would not contribute to your bitch, who was noise shy, who
died of bloat at any early age, who OFA'd in one hip and nearly in the
other, etc. Naturally Linda did a background introduction on them on
how they got started in the breed and a little personal history. Of
course I read this article ALL THOSE YEARS AGO when I got this issue,
but like any story sometimes you miss something with the first reading
or you forgot about it. I got re-educated. So I am writing in my own
words unless I quote and I will say that from this article.
The famous Lance: Joan leased Lance's mother, the great Elsa from Olli
Conti at 6 years of age. They did not know who they intended to breed
her to at that point, and a friend commented to her about the click with
Hein v. Ricterbach when blended with Axel-Trol descendants. Joan asked
Lucy Woodward to advise her which of the famous "F" boys of Arbywood
should she breed Elsa to. Lucy recommended Fortune. And the rest is
history. This produced Lance and Lonnie. From there, the Fords had
luck turned in their direction again, this time with Hillgrove's Erle.
When bred to Lance, the whole litter died. When Joan had the
opportunity to buy Erle, she jumped at it even though she was 6 years
old. When bred to Lance, she produced her gorgeous GV Mannix. From
there they introduced the "K" Waldesruh lines. She had tremendous luck
going back into Lance sons and grandsons and had some of her best
breeding going to Paladen.
Some criticized them for all the close breeding they did on Lance. An
interesting quote from a book that was written in 1901 which concerned
another species of animal describes the Fran-Jo kennel perfectly, (and I
quote): "It is impossible to follow out a methodical system without
considerable inbreeding. It is always found....that a man who is
constantly buying other stock to cross with rarely
succeeds....Successful breeders always depend mainly upon successive
generations of their own stock." (end quote).
They felt their Mannix was their finest animal they ever bred, whereas,
their Lance was their best producer. They talked about Zeto and Zeus
and addressed the question of Zeus being a finer boned dog, but was a
great producer of bitches. In fact he produced three GV's in a roll,
and a GV. Not bad for a dog who no one hardly ever saw unless you went
to breed to him.
She felt that the most serious problems in the ring at that time were
poor backs, with bad middle pieces, they were losing long sloping croups
and nice long arched necks. She felt the serious health problems were:
hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, esophageal archiasia, epilepsy,
panosteotis, torsion, and toxic gut syndrome, feeling that this last one
was the most serious one of all. And aren't we still dealing with this
today?!
The story goes on to tell how they raise their puppies and dogs, what
they were feeding, how they conditioned and trained their dogs, and she
also told of a cute story of her "heroine" dog. She had a personality
like my bitch that I own now (Amber) who had a friendly, sweet, outgoing
temperament. She was one that they said would probably never protect
her owner because she liked people too much. My girl is the same way,
but pull into my driveway or knock on the dog and you would think there
was a maniac on the other side (and no I'm not talking about
me....<VBG>). Anyway this was her bitch who she called Joansie. She
was walking her on the show grounds at night and a man came out of the
shadows and he accosted Joan even though he saw the dog there. Once
Joansie realized Joan was in trouble, she became wild and attacked the
man, which made him quickly disappear. The story didn't say whether or
not this man was ever caught or not. Needless to say, she was very
proud of the dog who was known to have the sweet, friendly, "show-dog"
temperament!
And here, after all these years, it was wonderful to see the Fords still
showing at this past years National and double handling like the rest of
us fools do. They were very well liked and respected then and are still
very well liked and respected. I thought some of you would enjoy
reading a little bit about one of the icons of our breeds, especially
the novices who have never met or knew about these fine people and their
dogs. I would love to see articles like this come back to our Review.
They are so informative. And I have to say, I did like the smaller
version of our Review. It was so much easier to read and handle.
Wouldn't this size Review save us money on advertising also? Just a
thought...........Barbara Galasso
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