Bob's Dog Blog

This post is for those of you who are actually concerned that your Rottweiler must weigh 140-180 pounds, so it can protect you and your personal property. I have stated in earlier posts that the Rottweiler is a medium to large breed and that there are size restrictions written into the breed standard and that these demands regarding size are unrealistic and unnecessary.

That doesn’t stop people calling me to ask ridiculous questions about the weight of parents, eventual weight of the pup along with the ‘fact’ that their last Rottweiler weighed 180 pounds, and so on. (As a side note, people generally are unable to guess the weights of things. I have a male who most people insist weighs 130 pounds who is actually around 98 pounds.)

If you want a Rottie to protect you, then get a Rottie who has good nerves, loads of drive and then train him or her slowly and correctly to do the work.   Size matters not at all.

To illustrate this, I have a link here of a video from France’s RAID anti-terrorist K-9 unit, showing their Belgian Malinois dogs doing various containment and take down drills.

These dogs weigh around fifty to sixty pounds each, tops. Enjoy the video and support the Rottweiler breed standard!

This post is for three  categories of Rottweiler owners:

1. Those who are new to the breed and who do not know what is the correct size for a Rottweiler.

2. Those who own or ‘breed’  Rottweilers who consider this dog to be a giant breed and who try to convince others of their altered, skewed understanding of the breed standard.

3. Those who own Rottweilers who feel their dog is ‘too small’ because they’ve been told so by others.

Here is the following, from the current, written Rottweiler Breed Standard, taken directly from the AKC web site:

The ideal Rottweiler is a medium large, robust and powerful dog, black with clearly defined rust markings…Dogs–24 inches to 27 inches. Bitches–22 inches to 25 inches, with preferred size being mid-range of each sex. Correct proportion is of primary importance, as long as size is within the standard’s range.

Please note that the Rottweiler is a ‘medium large’ dog. It is not a large or giant breed.  There is no mention of weight, no mention that the dog must weigh over a hundred pounds, or any specific weight for that matter. Note the heights for males and females (at the shoulders).  Those are the correct height ranges for Rottweilers. Take a tape measure and measure your dog’s height. If a dog is inside that height limit, it is considered  correct.  What else is there to understand?

Look, this is not rocket science. You can look up this info the same way that I did. If you own a pure bred dog, you might want to study the breed standard for that dog, just so you know what you have in front of you. Just a suggestion.

Anyone out there who is being told by others that their Rottweiler is ‘too small’, when their dog fits within the breed standard should understand that this is coming from an idiot. They should simply ignore these comments.  Anyone being told that their Rottweiler pup is ‘too small’ when it hasn’t finished developing should ignore this as well.  I personally have never taken kindly to complete strangers making comments to me about things they know nothing about, regardless of the subject.

Those of you out there who want a giant dog, then get a Mastiff or a Dane or some such….and please stop spreading false information about the Rottweiler breed. Thank you.

Every now and then I either receive an email or a phone call from someone claiming to know everything about Rottweilers. I’m not exaggerating here. The one sided conversation goes something like this:

Hello I am so and so and I’ve owned Rottweilers for so many years/all my life and I know everything about them.

The above is a generic example, but is very close to the truth. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad, except I then get the following from these same people:

So, do you have any 160 pound Rottweilers with big blocky heads? You know, German Rottweilers, not those American Rottweilers. They also need to have short muzzles, too.

This is a bad thing. For someone to claim they no longer need to learn about a subject, who also boasts about their ignorance on that same topic indicates to me that they are unwilling to look or improve their knowledge about something. I have been working with this breed for a third of my life and every day I learn something new about them. The old adage that ‘a little knowledge is a bad thing’ seems to apply here.

To make matters worse, when I attempt to correct their false information, no matter how tactfully put, I am always met with a negative reaction from this sort of person. Needless to say, they never adopt one of my puppies.

For a dog breed to improve, or at least to keep its integrity, it needs to be owned by people who actually care and study the breed to the point where they are knowledgeable enough to forward information regarding the correct components of that breed, whether physical or temperament or both, to others.

To continue to spread false information about a breed, such as the Rottweiler, not only makes worse any public understanding of this incredible dog, but justifies the production of specimens who are oversized, unhealthy and lack the specific characteristics that make a Rottweiler unique in the dog world.

Please, if you know something about Rottweilers, have the modesty and humility to listen to someone else who may know a bit more than you and learn something new. Go to the AKC web site and research your breed there. Go to dog shows to at least look at other examples of the breed. Read books and look at pictures of correct specimens.

Get comfortable with the subject. Then, after a while, you should be able to develop good judgment about the Rottweiler and be able to get others to do so as well. If enough people don’t start doing this, the Rottweiler breed will be lost forever.

Best,
Bob

I just wanted to add a bit to yesterday’s post, ‘Learn About The Rottweiler Breed Standard’ after realizing that there probably needed to be a bit more context in order to fully clarify what I wrote.

1. To start off, in fact, there is no such thing as a dog that conforms 100% with this breed description. Anyone, breeder and owner included, who tells you that their dog or dogs are perfect is not being honest. Not with themselves, to begin with and certainly not with anyone else. All breeders should be working towards this standard and obviously, the closer we get, the better. All dogs have flaws and the ones with the fewest flaws are considered for breeding programs and the show ring. It’s not more complicated than that.

2. However, if your own dog doesn’t fully comply with this standard, that is of lesser importance compared to the qualities that are truly vital to a pet owner: temperament, health, intelligence, playfulness and all the other qualities that you love about your Rottweiler. I have seen Rottweilers that can work the pants off of most dogs, who are not necessarily dogs for the show ring. Some variations in appearance are natural, considering all of the genetic combinations available within this breed. When I evaluate a pup, for example, I certainly take into account the pup’s conformation. That is only one category out of several, including temperament, the various drives, nerves, focus, activity level, among others. The best pups, in my opinion, are those that are conformationally correct where it counts that additionally possess great health, spirit and working ability.

2. That being said, my intention in writing yesterday’s post was to somehow neutralize the people who falsely think they know best about the Rottweiler breed who, in fact, are trying to influence others in their misinformation. These are the folks who want others to believe that a medium to large breed such as the Rottweiler should be the size of a mastiff. That the head must look this way or that, without even understanding correct type to begin with. The list goes on. These people are not only obsessed with their ridiculously false ideas concerning how a Rottweiler MUST LOOK AND WEIGH more than the overall picture of what the dog truly should look like and most importantly, what each dog brings to the table for dog ownership/companionship. None of these so-called experts have ever actually read either of the written breed standards, much less understood them.

So, to anyone who reads this, when looking for and purchasing a Rottweiler pup (or any other purebred dog) as a companion animal remember to view the whole picture and not just a few body parts.

Best,
Bob

This post is primarily for anyone who wants to learn about what a Rottweiler is supposed to look like. It is also for anyone who wishes to get into an argument with me or any other knowledgeable person about Rottweiler conformation.

Over the years I have been challenged on everything from muzzle length, physical type (are they ‘American’ or are they ‘German’?), head type, weight, size and so on. Since my arguing with ‘experts’ about these things goes nowhere, here is my solution. Read this post and follow the links.

The following links are the ONLY descriptions of what a Rottweiler is supposed to look like. It really doesn’t matter what mental pictures are in your head or what some moron told you about their five thousand pound dog with a short muzzle who is a ‘Giant King Super Sized’ Rottweiler.

The Rottweiler is considered a pure bred dog. As such, its appearance is dictated by a written ‘breed standard’, not the consensus of the general public. These standards were composed by people who had spent many years working with the Rottweiler breed and had developed a very specific phenotype for this animal, which they wanted to be preserved genetically. Thus there is a written description for other breeders, show judges and Rottweiler fanciers to compare their animals to, in order to maintain the correct appearance of this breed. Somehow, correctly, they knew there would be idiots out there (usually living in the US) who would attempt to aberrate the physical type of this beautiful dog.

As a result, the only two authorized descriptions of the Rottweiler breed are found on

1. American Kennel Club’s web site. The AKC Rottweiler Breed Standard is found at

http://www.akc.org/breeds/rottweiler/index.cfm

2. For European Imported dogs, the FCI (European) Rottweiler Breed Standard can be found translated at the USRC web site -

http://www.usrconline.org/breedstand.html

For those of you who want to learn, I hope this has helped.

Additionally, if anyone out there has a disagreement with any of the above, I suggest you write to the breed clubs and argue with them.

Good luck!

Bob

I’d like to take a moment to clarify something regarding genetics and dogs, specifically Rottweilers. When a prospective owner asks me how big the parents of a pup are, I shudder. Mostly, I am expecting the person to tell me the ‘ My last dog was a 160 pound Rottie’ story, during which I will have to painfully sit through and try not to open my mouth.

Otherwise and surprisingly, most of the time, the people are simply curious and perhaps concerned that their dog will not be undersized or oversized. That’s a reasonable enough concern, but to be honest (and I’m speaking as a breeder, not a geneticist) the size of the parents does not always have a direct bearing on the size of the offspring. This is not a breed where we are dealing with a wide variety of different sizes or variations, but a single breed standard. More appropriate might be to perhaps ask what the sizes of the grandparents were (as many times genetic reproduction skips a generation), but even then the following rule applies:

THE RELATIVE SIZE OF THE PUPPY AT EIGHT WEEKS MAY HAVE VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH ITS FINAL SIZE AS AN ADULT. THE SIZES OF THE PARENTS MAY ALSO HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH THE FINAL SIZE OF THE PUP. WHAT YOU WANT ARE CORRECT PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS AS PER THE ROTTWEILER BREED STANDARD. THEN YOUR PUP SHOULD BE CORRECT.

I have more than one instance of offspring being as big or bigger than the parents. By the way, we’re talking about a half inch of height and eight pounds of weight. Not a big deal, just something that happens. Maybe they’re on a different food or the stress levels are different. Just like you may not be the same size as your parents.

Here’s rule number two:

IF YOU ARE SO TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY  CONCERNED ABOUT THE SIZE OF YOUR ROTTWEILER, THEN MAYBE YOU NEED TO FIND ANOTHER BREED THAT FITS YOUR SIZE ISSUES. LIKE A GREAT DANE OR A BULL MASTIFF OR A SMALL PONY.

There are other things I could say about guys (that is usually who asks) and size as relates to dogs, trucks, boats, etc, but I would be travelling way off subject.

By the way, in Germany there is not so much of a concern about large size, but working ability, health and good nerves. One of the greatest German Born Rottweilers of all time, Benno Von Der Schwarzen Heide, was around 80 pounds.  Anyone who thinks their Rottweiler needs to weigh in at 140 pounds is sadly misinformed.

Don’t worry. Your pup is just fine.

Enough said, for now.

Best,

Bob

Here is my second article on common false info that I hear about Rottweilers on a regular basis. This is a classic piece of misinformation. I am constantly being told by a caller or someone who has a relative, etc or who he/she themselves owned or currently owns a 160-200 lb Rottweiler. And, let me add, this dog ALWAYS has a head the size of a watermelon. Always.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never in my life seen such a dog- not at a dog show, at the park, at the pet store or anywhere. If almost everyone I talk to (and I have talked to a lot of people in ten years of breeding dogs) knows of one of these, how come I have never seen one? To be that big, the dog would look like a, let’s see, uh, a…..MASTIFF. That’s right, a Mastiff, which they are not.

The Rottweiler Quarterly once put on a contest to see who could send them actual proof, on a scale, that a 160 lb Rottweiler existed. Nothing. Nobody ever came forward. Well, I could dismiss that as just, well, those kind of dog owners don’t read the Rottweiler Quarterly. Okay. However, none of these people who claim to have heard of or have seen one of these have never seen them on a scale, weighed and confirmed the dog at that weight. All they do is listen to the owner talk it up and believe it fully.
Now, I am going to use harsh language, so if you can’t handle it, leave the blog now. The tale of the 160 pound Rottweiler is pure bullshit. Period. It is the classic fish story. My dog is bigger than your dog. I have seen large Rottweilers – big males who maybe even should lose a few pounds. Maximum weight probably was 129 pounds. Tops. That’s it. Not 160, 180 or anything like that. People, stop being so gullible by actually believing some idiot who tells you that his dog weighs more than you do. Same with the heads. No, I’m sorry, there are not Rottweilers out there with heads the size of engine blocks, yet I regularly meet a yahoo who will show me with his arms in a circle, the circumference of the dog’s head being about the size of a garbage can lid. Okay, whatever you say.

The reason I bring this up at all is that I actually get people calling me for pups wanting to know if they can get a pup who will grow up to be 180 lbs. I can’t hang up fast enough.

Look, the breed standard is very specific on the height for males and females at the withers and although there is no weight standard or description, a dog that is no more than 27 inches at the withers is not going to weigh 160 lbs and be in proportion at all. End of scene.

So, if you really want a dog that weighs that much, if it means that much to you to have a big, slow, uncomfortable dog with a giant head, then I suggest you buy a Bull Mastiff or Neo Mastiff and be done with it. If you don’t believe what I’ve written here, go to a dog show and ask a breeder or handler about this and listen to what they have to tell you. I’m not a huge fan of the show ring, but at least they know what the dog they’re showing is supposed to look like. I rest my case.

Bob