# East European Shepherd - Distinct line or separate breed?



## CarolinaRose (Jun 21, 2014)

So, I was browsing through the internet looking at german shepherd things as I do, and my husband came in talking about how a TV show showed him he could do an image search in google by just dragging an image into their image search. I was intrigued so I opened my favorite GSD images and posted one of Xantor vom Rhineland to see what comes up. The drag-n-drop feature only works in a chrome browser, but you can upload an image if you use a different browser. 

What I got were a lot of images from Russia, and I was so surprised to see such consistently straight top-lines. They were actually a bit too straight structurally for me, but overall I really liked them!

However, I can't seem to figure out if these are simply a distinct Russian LINE of German Shepherd, or an actual separate breed. Does anyone know, if I were to purchase a puppy from an EES breeder, would I be able to register the puppy here as a German Shepherd? 

It doesn't say anything about working ability (that I've been able to find in the last 25min), so maybe they focus more on structure? Dunno, but there would only be one way to find out, right? 

If you do a google image search on "East European Shepherd" You'll get an idea of the images I found, but they weren't these exactly.


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## CarolinaRose (Jun 21, 2014)

I found this forum topic:

http://www.germanshepherds.com/forum/bloodlines-pedigrees/283217-eastern-european-shepherd.html

And it seems that they are recognized as a separate breed, yes? Too bad. They look very nice at least, still not knowing just what the temperament or working ability is.


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## Otakubenny (Sep 22, 2015)

Not sure about the EES and this is a small anecdote, but I spent a summer in Saint Petersburg and the GSDs I saw there were very interesting - and they seemed to be quite popular. So to me they sort of looked like pictures of old GSDs I have seen, like pre 70s. Except they were also big, tall and strongly built, big heads, not blocky like a DDR but chiseled if that makes sense. Each one I saw had the standard black/tan coat but the tan was darker than what we're used to seeing. 

It was very interesting to me as a GSD fanatic haha, they definitely have distinct lines over there.


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## Wanderer (Apr 9, 2011)

There was a time shortly after World War Two when the Soviet Government imported a lot of different dog breeds that they felt would be useful and set up state run breeding programs. Often they would get some purebred dogs and breed them with similar local dogs. It allowed faster production (rather than import 2 males and 8 females, import 10 males, mate them to 100 local females, take those pups, shift them so you aren't mating child to grandparent, and you end up with 1000 dogs that are 3/4 GSDs in only 3 dog-generations.) but also feeds into national pride to have a 'home grown' version.

They then selectively bred their best 3/4th GSD dogs (I am sure still crossing in the best pure GSDs) to each-other.

If it was livestock, once it was bred up so it was 7/8ths pure, they'd call it a purebred and ignore the 1/8th as inconsequential as long as it conformed to type.

But we view dogs differently, so they are a different breed than GSDs rather than a distinct regional/governmental line of GSDs like the Czech and DDR GSDs we got access to after the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR crumbled.


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## hemicop (Feb 13, 2016)

From what I've learned, they're still the same breed. WHere you're seeing a difference is in the bloodlines E. Germany & Eastern European breeders were forced to use due to the Iron Curtain and due to the different emphasis on work. They were (are?) much tougher in Eastern Europe due to more militarized view of working dogs, so you'll see a different emphasis, attitude, whatever about the dogs. Not bad, IMO, just different


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## Wanderer (Apr 9, 2011)

Regardless if they are Pure GSD or had various other breeds mixed in with GSD 70 years ago, at this point it doesn't matter much. What matters is that whatever they had in them back 20 generations, what matters is how the breeders judged each generation of progeny and what features they chose to look for and breed for. You could take dogs that were 100% GSD, ignore the standard and breed smallest to smallest and it wouldn't take that many generations to get something no bigger than a Beagle. OTOH if you had a group of dogs that were each 50% GSD, and bred them for 10 generations trying to match the GSD standard, pretty quickly you'd end up with something indistinguishable from a GSD even though technically still just 50% GSD


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## MineAreWorkingline (May 2, 2015)

Wanderer said:


> Regardless if they are Pure GSD or had various other breeds mixed in with GSD 70 years ago, at this point it doesn't matter much. What matters is that whatever they had in them back 20 generations, what matters is how the breeders judged each generation of progeny and what features they chose to look for and breed for. You could take dogs that were 100% GSD, ignore the standard and breed smallest to smallest and it wouldn't take that many generations to get something no bigger than a Beagle. OTOH if you had a group of dogs that were each 50% GSD, and bred them for 10 generations trying to match the GSD standard, pretty quickly you'd end up with something indistinguishable from a GSD even though technically still just 50% GSD


When Tina Barber set out to create Shiloh Shepherds, she found one of the hardest things to fix was size. She found it so difficult as to introduce an OS Alaskan Malamute to introduce size genes. (She did not like the rogue temperaments produced and eliminated those dogs from her program). I am of the understanding that for size, color, etc., and even behavioral traits to be produced, the genes must be there to produce them, barring mutations.


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## KZoppa (Aug 14, 2010)

The EES is it's own breed. They have GSD lines way back but they're their own breed now. Russian is very protective of the breed too. It's extremely difficult to have them exported as a result. I had a history teacher in high school who was Russian. He jumped through serious hoops to have his dog brought with him and even then, if for any reason he couldn't take care of the dog, he would have had to return the dog to Russia.


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## alexg (Mar 22, 2013)

Russians do not have much of their own. Whatever they have it is either stolen or copied. Their Black Terrier is mix of the Giant Schnauzer and some other breed(s), Tu-144 is a stolen Concorde and AK-47 is a Schmeiser. 

The East European Shepherd is copy of a German Shepherd that can't be called German because it is implied it was originated somewhere outside of the "Great Russia"


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## hemicop (Feb 13, 2016)

Are we talking East GSDs or Eastern European GSDs or RUSSIAN GSDs? Withe the tight control in communist countries, some of which are no more, you have to be clear here........


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## alexg (Mar 22, 2013)

I have never heard of a RUSSIAN GSD. How does it sound - russian German Shepherd Dog?
I know about the so-called Southern Russian Shepherd and Kavkazian Shepherd but these breeds not even close to GSD


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## hemicop (Feb 13, 2016)

alexg said:


> I have never heard of a RUSSIAN GSD. How does it sound - russian German Shepherd Dog?
> I know about the so-called Southern Russian Shepherd and Kavkazian Shepherd but these breeds not even close to GSD


 That's what I was thinking. While von Stephanitz makes a distinction between Northern & Southern GSDs in his book & I've heard people refer to E. German Shepherds or Eastern European GSDs, I never heard of someone being so particular as talking about RUSSIAN:thinking: GSDs?


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## KZoppa (Aug 14, 2010)

If you look specifically for East European Shepherds you'll find they're a Russian breed at this point. They're specifically called East European Shepherd because though they can be traced back to GSDs at the start, they're a separate breed now. 
East European SHEPHERD-Russian German Shepherd-Ovcharka


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## River-Otter (Jun 1, 2015)

MineAreWorkingline said:


> When Tina Barber set out to create Shiloh Shepherds, she found one of the hardest things to fix was size. She found it so difficult as to introduce an OS Alaskan Malamute to introduce size genes. (She did not like the rogue temperaments produced and eliminated those dogs from her program). I am of the understanding that for size, color, etc., and even behavioral traits to be produced, the genes must be there to produce them, barring mutations.


Size is easy, extremes are hard. Shiloh Shepherds, you're looking at trying to breed dogs that are pretty much as big as dogs get. Danes, bullmastiffs, wolhounds and other huge dogs have centuries of breeding for size behind them and still consistently throw smaller individuals. Just like I don't know a breeder of tiny toy dogs who doesn't breed teeny males to too-large-to-show females.

Every species has a range where genetically they "want" to be. Some have a proportionately huge range (dogs) some have a much smaller one (cattle), Dogs pretty much want to be between 20 and 70#. Choose any 5-10# stretch within that range and you can get it very consistently. Go above or below that and you'll get animals outside your target size on a regular basis. 

Not that you can't breed extremes, given time, but usually the most successful breeding of extreme sizes does involve mutations, such as types of dwarfism


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## David Taggart (Nov 25, 2012)

This subject was a centre of my attention for several years, exactly years from the moment of collapse of Soviet Empire to the present moment. So called "East European Shepherd" is a rare breed created in 30-s on the basis of German Shepherd and Husky (for which white colour instead of red is typical to dog's coat). These dogs proved to be very good working dogs in early Soviet era. And, That is , actually, is the end. What had happened to the original breed? It may not exist. 
German Shepherds as a breed have reached the top in breeding exactly in Hitler times, Germany had a task of breeding "Superdog", a superintellect with superabilities. And they succeded as well as in many thechnological things. Soviets saw that German superdogs are more advanced than Russian breed, Soviets cleared kennels of Eastern Germany and continued so called "East European line" on the territory of Belarus. I saw pedigrees of those dogs, where Soviets clearly were writing - "East European German Shepherd" - maybe there are some Russians in this Forum, they wouldn't let me tell wrong. Instead, That are the Russians themselves who make the water murky, it is them who started to call East European Shepherds a separate breed. There is no problem to bring your EEGSD to German Show and IPO competition, but Russians don't want to go same way as others do! They want to brew in their own brew, breed and judge themselves. East European German Shepherd as a breeding line has a great future as long as the line is registered in Germany through Association.


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## David Taggart (Nov 25, 2012)

If you like large size - look at DDR and Chezh dogs, they are the same dogs from the same East Germany with the same genetic traits as Russian overgrows, just registered.


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## Wanderer (Apr 9, 2011)

MineAreWorkingline said:


> When Tina Barber set out to create Shiloh Shepherds, she found one of the hardest things to fix was size. She found it so difficult as to introduce an OS Alaskan Malamute to introduce size genes. (She did not like the rogue temperaments produced and eliminated those dogs from her program). I am of the understanding that for size, color, etc., and even behavioral traits to be produced, the genes must be there to produce them, barring mutations.


True enough. The gene needs to be there. 

Not sure if Tina Barber would have needed to turn to different breeds to get sizes if she had a deeper pool to work with and/or she had bred longer.


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## RMD (Mar 28, 2021)

Both German Shepherds and East-European Shepherds (VEO) are amazing breeds. However, they are an entirely different breed of dog.


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## Sunflowers (Feb 17, 2012)

This thread is from 2016.


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## markoff (Nov 20, 2020)

I spent a lot of time around them 


RMD said:


> Both German Shepherds and East-European Shepherds (VEO) are amazing breeds. However, they are an entirely different breed of dog.


I agree they are amazing! I spent a lot of time around VEO during my childhood, including those of my relatives. Also, they were registered as GSDs, so I never thought about them as a different breed. It was the end of the Soviet Union and even some years later, but many things could have changed.


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