Log on to the following link.  It is very informative and interesting.

www.kc.net/%7Ewolf2dog/gsd1.htm

thats quite interesting! i have a siberian husky and you wouldnt believe how many people say "thats a wolf!" how much truth in that?not much i guess.they just look similar to wolves i  guess.but german shepards??! new one on me!

But completely true!  The reason Ann Dresselhaus published that article was dispel the myth that many GSD breeders like to promulgate - that the GSD was bred from wolves.  As was the husky, malamute, belgian shepherd, maremma, etc. etc. - not to mention the Czech wolf dog of course, the sarloos and there's another one whose name I can never remember!

Sorry to reopen a month old thread (I have been offline for a while) but I am intrigued that you seem to be suggesting (in this post and a locked thread) that Maremmas have been bred from wolves in the recent past??

Maremmas (Maremmano-Abruzzese) are an ancient breed - there are 2000 year old descriptions of dogs of this type. They are flock protectors - one of their traditional "enemies" is the wolf. They work because they have low predatory instincts - hardly the characteristics of a wolf.
In fact they neither look nor act like wolves.

Of course all canines descend from wolves in one sense but is there evidence that it is any more than a distant ancestor for this breed?

Janet

Hey, there's nothing wrong with a dog having recent wolf heritage. :-D

Interesting article, Nikki, I came across reports like that quite a while ago.  There are some who say that Captain Von Stephanitz used several pure wolves mixed with sheep herding dogs to create the GSD breed.  And that books written in Germany in the early 1900's had all references to recent wolf heritage removed when translated.  It's very interesting.