Breeding and Rearing 
51 
individual, and again, the faults that are caused by 
the combination of certain blood lines. For in¬ 
stance, a famous sire had the reputation in Germany 
of siring puppies with abnormally short tails, and 
we all know that in a short tail is usually a badly 
carried tail. He was sold to America, and for a 
long time produced tails of the proper length, when 
suddenly a litter sired by him was born in which 
there were puppies that were almost tailless! This 
is a very good demonstration of the juncture of two 
families in which there was a strong inherent fault. 
Among the early ancestors of these families there 
were, no doubt, some strong influxes of the Old Ger¬ 
man Sheep Dog, who has a very short tail, and, like 
the Old English, is sometimes born without a tail, 
and it is known that the breeders of working dogs 
used this cross in the early days. 
The Shepherd sires as a rule are very virile in the 
production of their family character and are, per¬ 
haps more than any other breed, very prepotent in 
the reproduction of their own form and type, so it 
behooves the breeder to select a sire that does not 
possess the faults of his bitch, but rather has the 
qualities to correct them. Light boned bitches should 
be bred to dogs of substance, and heavy low bitches 
to dogs of a racier, lither type, but the chief family 
characteristics must always be kept in mind. Above 
all things, the sire must be perfectly free from all 
outstanding faults, such as an overshot or undershot 
mouth, loose or pinched shoulders, cow-hocked or 
bowed hindquarters, etc., for an undershot mouth 
has never corrected an overshot mouth, or vice versa; 
