I had my Belgian in the very early eighties, you hardly ever saw them then. I'm not sure I ever came across another one, other than at a show.

I'm not sure if their current increasing popularity will be good for the breed or not, time will tell.

There does seem to be rather closer inbreeding now than was the case then, or maybe that was just mine.

Have a look at the Danaher animal home wethersfield, this is where they are. (not sure if allowed to put a link on?) Anyway, maybe they will appear clearer on there

One of mine was quite inbred, he was very dark - I forget the name of his sire but he appeared closely several times in the latest generations. The name is on the tip of my tongue!!! He was going to be kept for showing but he had a tooth behind some of the others, and also one undescended testicle. He was a big softy

Yes that was about 1984 - there are certainly much more about now!

Wys
x

I first heard about Belgian Shepherds, when I was a child (probably about 12 years old) in the early 1980s and read the book "Jack" by Frank Walker. My sister, who is a year older than I, started working on a Saturday at a breeding/boarding kennels in Cartmel and the breeder there had a couple of Tervs.

You would never have expected them to start ending up in rescue - but then the same could be said about a lot of breeds - just about any breed can turn up in rescue now (and does )

in the early 80's the Tervueren had only just been introduced into the UK and was dominated by dogs imported from America - Belamba and Vallivue were influential Tervueren kennels back then as was Bergerac who brought dogs in from France and Belgium too
CH Bergerac Love Kills http://baza.belgi.pl/modules/animal/...php?pedid=2496
was an influential sire back then - could he have been your boy's sire too ?.

Today KC Registrations remain small - for example for the period April-June 2011 last year they were :

Groenendaels =26
Tervuerens = 30
Laekenois = 0
Malinois = 30

compared to 2,470 GSD registered for the same period !!

There are only a handful of Groenendael, Tervueren and Laekenois breeders and rescue is rarely a big problem as there is usually a waiting list for any dogs that do have to be rehomed -so it is a worrying trend to find BSD in general rescue centres -and even more worrying that we have cases of Malinois being puppy farmed .

I met my first Tervuerens in 1987... I've always wondered what their breeding was.

Sue - you can use the Baza.belgi data base I've linked above to trace back Merlins ancestry right back to the beginnings of the breed - just keep clicking back on the third generation - fascinating stuff if you're a Belgian geek like me !!

I've already done that using Pawvillage, and gone back on Merlin's dad and linked to Picard D'Uccle, Tom, Poes, Tomy, Tjop and all the early names.

i had never heard of any of the Belgian shepherds till i started working in security. About 6 of our staff have them. my brother has a 5 month old one that i have to say is doing better in his training than any of the germans my brother has had but i have no idea if that the dog or breed. I still much prefer the germans myslef.

hope those beautiful girls find good homes

Thanks for that. Just been looking up my boys