12/07/2022
The group might like this:
In its native Germany, the Weimaraner has always been bred exclusively by hunters, for hunters. Unfortunately in much of the rest of the world today, that majority of Weimaraner breeders are non-hunters breeding dogs from unproven lines for a growing companion animal market. As a result, hunting abilities in the breed have declined overall and the Weimaraner’s reputation among hunters has fallen to an all-time low. Fortunately, there have always been breeders and groups of hunters also outside of Germany that remained true to the Weimaraner as an excellent all-round hunting companion. While relatively few in number, these dedicated individuals adhere to the principle of “form follows function” and select their breeding stock based on natural hunting abilities and proven performance in field trials and hunting tests. Until very recently however, they had no choice but to work in the shadow of the vocal majority of non-hunting breeders that dominate most Weimaraner breed clubs. But thanks to the Internet, they now have the means to combine their efforts, easily exchange information and advance their breeding programs. In 2007 discussions on a private field-oriented forum in North America eventually led to the formationof the Hunting Weimaraner Alliance in 2010.
In 2011, the Alliance concept was extended to Europe and the World Alliance of Hunting Weimaraners was founded. The Alliance isn't really a "club"; rather, as the name implies, it is a group of people joined together by a common cause and shared dedication to what they believe the Weimaraner should be : a versatile HUNTING dog!
BY CRAIG KOSHYK
Form follows function is a fairly loose translation of the German expression "Durch Leistung zum Typ". Tradition has it that Prince Albrecht of Solmes was the first to use the expression as a way to summarize a progressive approach to breeding that he and others such as Eduard Korthals advocated in the 1880s.
As a concept, “Durch Leistung zum Typ" is now considered to be the foundation of the entire German system of hunting dog selection and has become the sacred motto to many German breeders and one of the most important guiding principles of the German Kurzhaar and Drahtaar clubs (and by extension all other German HPR clubs).
Unfortunately, conformation fetishists often fail to understand the concept of "Durch Leistung zum Typ" and fall prey to the very same fallacies that were discredited nearly 150 years ago when Albrect of Solmes and his supporters succeeded in dragging German dog breeding kicking and screaming into the modern era.
I don’t really have the time or space to go over everything in detail, and since the story is so well known in Germany and among field-oriented breeders elsewhere, I will just go over the basic outline here.
In a nutshell, German breeders in the mid 1800’s were faced with a dilemma. They all wanted to create breeds of versatile pointing dogs, but none of them really knew how to go about it. Eventually two camps formed.
One camp believed that they should select dogs based on appearance (form). Their reasoning was as follows: "Since the great dogs of our grandfathers had rounded ears, we will select only dogs with rounded ears, therefore they will be great like the dogs of our grandfathers. And since the great Germanic dogs of our Grandfathers had “roman” noses, we will select for roman noses only and discard any dogs with a pronounced stop, therefore they will be great like our grandfathers’ dogs"..and so on and so forth.
Basically, they were arguing that function (the level of performance in the field) depends solely on the form (appearance) of a dog. So their goal was to breed dogs that looked exactly like the great dogs of their grandfathers and automatically get super performing dogs! (spoiler alert: somehow they missed the fact that their grandfathers never had ANY dogs, let alone super versatiles..but I digress).
On the other side of the debate were rationalists like Solmes and Korthals who believed the exact opposite. Despite the fact that then knew very little about evolution and absolutely nothing about genetics (Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, was only published in1859 and not yet well understood by mainstream breeders), they felt that form (the appearance of a dog) must be determined by its function (the requirements of the field). They suspected that the reason animals look the way the way they look (their ‘form’) is due to the culmination of many generations of adaptation to the requirements of a particular environment (function). So their reasoning was as follows: "Let's test every dog, regardless of its appearance (form).
Bring em on!! We will judge them only on the basis of their abilities in the field and not give a rat's ass about their ear shape, length of back, shape of nose, eye color etc. etc. We will let performance (Leistung) determine form (Typ).
PART 2: The Great Debate Ends (or does it?).
As seen in part one, the creators of the versatiles in Germany and elsewhere basically had two options: a) they could select dogs to look a certain way and then hope for great abilities to follow or b) they could select dogs that performed well and accept whatever appearance came with proven ability.
To test their ideas and finally prove who was correct, they came up with a system that is still with us today: field, forest and water tests and trials. Again, space prevents me from going into the details of the early testing and field trial systems on the continent, but it is a fascinating subject. (Buy my book to read more about it 🙂
Anyway, it did not take long for everyone to realize who had the correct approach. The "performance first" breeders clearly won the debate. Their dogs may not have had the 'correct' ear shape, "germanic noses" or the 'noble bearing of grandfather's dogs' but they met the performance requirements of the field and went on to form the foundation of all the modern German HPR breeds.
And what happened to the breeders obsessed with trying to breed for the perfect ear shape? Well, they got their asses handed to them at the tests. Their dogs were absolutely dreadful and described in the press of the day as 'shuffling pigs'... or worse.
So the debate ended, the question was settled..at least in Germany. To this day, German breeders follow, to the letter, the idea of "Durch Leistung zum Typ" which could be more accurately summed up as "only by critically examining performance can we achieve the ideal type".
Elsewhere however, it seems that the the old debunked idea of breeding for form and hoping for performance actually managed to survive. In fact it now dominates our breed and thrives in show rings around the world!
The only difference now is that show breeders who I refer to as conformation fetishists go on and on about the 'mechanics of gait' and draw up diagrams with very precise measurements of shoulder angulation, length of back and neck etc.
And in a way, there is some validity to their position. Angles CAN be measured and mechanical concepts DO apply to the structure of dogs. But what they fail to understand is that unless a concept moves from the drawing board to the testing bed, it is nothing but smoke and mirrors. All the diagrams and measurements in the world mean nothing until they are proven in exacting tests in the field.
After all, if we only needed to select for the 'right' form the Greyhound that wins Best of Breed at Krufts would automatically be the fastest dog in the world. But it is not. In fact it is not even close to being competitive. Any decent racing greyhound could run circles around it...on only three legs!
Now of course versatile dog testing and trials are more complicated than using a stopwatch to determine the fastest greyhound. But the concept remains the same. Performance is what counts. Performance must comes before any other consideration. If a breed is to improve you must test, prove and then select only from among the best performers. If you then want to select for a certain color or a certain coat type etc. fine, do that…but only from among the proven performers. If you do it the other way around…select for ‘form’ first and then hope performance abilities follows, you are doing it ass backwards…like the majority of show breeders.
