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Date Posted: 08:04:22 11/20/09 Fri
Author: DKH
Subject: Selective memories...

Pardon the new string, we have this conversation merging in two seperate strings below.

I have long assumed the Boerboel to be a Farm-cur from South Africa...African breeders have been open about the influences of different types, strains, and breeds through-out the history and developement of the Boerboel. Ban-dog? I don't think so...different forces early on shaped the dog for a utility life on the pioneer farm. Those needs may well have been location specific, and the outcrosses available in one area may well have been different than in an other location...but farm/utility-family/guard seems to be the goal. Not the goal of traditional Ban-doggers.

When history tells us that circa 1970's a group interested in preserving the type created a registry to locate, identify, and register the dogs suitable for the traditional role the Boerboel served...we can consider the dog a working farm cur...good or bad, he was selected from stock that could/would conceivably fill the traditional role. A Farmers big dog. Not rocket science.

From the time the registry was started, and with the developmental registry assisting, dogs were graded and faulted for showing signs of out-cross. The Boerboel type was not set, but obvious physical and temperamental goals and concerns governed. At that point, a breed was born. Developing? Yes, from a hodge-podge genetic pool? Yes. But you have to start SOMEWHERE.

To accept that this dog was formed and selected from stock doing a common task is common sense. But now a breed has emerged...what is it's task? Although a utility breed, if the task and goal is not common to the majority of breeders, then branches will start to form, and this breed will go in multiple directions. If the 'sport' crowd deems the need for higher prey drive to make their job easier, they will select for it (or look for it elsewhere)...if the companion animal crowd deems the need to emasculate the breed into a docile, whimpering, veranda sleeper...they will select for it, and you get another English mastiff. Either way, you make unilateral changes to the traits this Breed was known for and preserved for by the original founders.

My opinion; The original intent was to preserve a working farm dog...a Boerboel. As luck would have it, the latent talents and capabilities in the new breed work well at many different aspects of work...a credit to the utility heritage of the dog. The same due diligence of early breeders that has produced a dog that in one litter can produce a sport capable dog, a great reliable companion animal for family, and a dedicated and very capable defender of life and home...all in the same litter...sometimes all in the same dog...that due diligence is working. Who says they can improve on that?

Good breeders who keep their eye on the goal set by the original Boerboel breeders, seeking improvements in health and reliable temperaments, will continue to produce good viable working dogs, suited to all kinds of people. Breeders who veer from this path may produce specialist at one talent, but they will inevetibly lose the essence of Boerboel that brought them here in the first place.

JMHO,
David

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