In the grand bazaar of dogdom, our modern town square of Facebook groups, WhatsApp threads, and ringside gossip, the laments are piling high. Too deep, too short, too overdone, too soft, too curved, too brittle. The catalogue of “toos” has become longer than a judge’s critique on a rainy afternoon. And at the center of it all lies the forehand, that noble mechanism meant to carry the German Shepherd forward for miles upon miles.
Yet today, we find ourselves staring at an epidemic of short forelegs, over-angled rears, and backs curved like questionable bridges to nowhere. Dogs that ought to flow like poetry now stumble into caricature: overly mature young things with oversized heads and fronts so compromised that no shepherd in their right mind would trust them to manage a flock of errant sheep, let alone trot across a stubble field all day.
The Work of the Forehand
Let’s pause for a moment. Why does it matter? Because the German Shepherd Dog is, at its essence, a mover. Form follows function. The forehand: shoulder blade, upper arm, foreleg: isn’t an ornament, it’s an engine. Correctly laid and proportioned, it gifts the dog reach, balance, and efficiency. It spares him wasted energy. It makes possible the famous effortless gait that can cover ground all day long without pounding his joints into dust.
The correct dog moves with the elegance of a violinist’s bow: smooth, balanced, and precise. The faulty dog, alas, resembles more a garage band drummer—lots of noise, little music.
The Curious Case of Shrinking Giants
Somewhere along the way, in the name of “correcting size,” breeders shrank the frame but forgot the harmony. Smaller, yes. Better? Hardly. Out came undersized dogs with toy-like fronts, hocks wound up like mousetraps, heads that belong to another species altogether. In trying to fix one problem, we’ve cooked up a dozen more.
Darwin, were he alive to witness this spectacle, might shake his head and scribble a new chapter: On the Misapplication of Selection in Canis Familiaris.
The Spectacle vs. The Shepherd
Step into a Sieger ring today and what do you see? A crowd thrilled by spectacle: handlers dragging dogs at full tilt, spines arched, tails pumping like metronomes, forehands barely managing to keep up with the over-drive of the rear. The cheers rise, the ribbons fall, and yet somewhere in the commotion, the point has been missed entirely.
A German Shepherd is not meant to be a racehorse, nor a circus act. It is meant to be a worker. And in work, efficiency is king.
A Call Back to Sanity
The forehand is not optional equipment. It is the fulcrum of the breed’s identity. Strip it away with short legs, bad angulation, and warped spines, and what remains is not a German Shepherd, it is an imposter with a pedigree.
Our task is not to breed for applause or Instagram likes. It is to honor the form that makes the function possible. To choose anatomy over exaggeration, efficiency over vanity. To ensure that when the history of this breed is written, it is not footnoted with: Here lay the dog that could no longer do the work it was bred for.