The Weimaraner is not the dog for everyone. He cannot
just be put outside in the back yard because his mind is too creative and intelligent, and
he will be bored and is totally capable of eating your lawn furniture or your lawn mower.
He needs plenty of attention, and he needs plenty of instruction on the "rights and
wrongs" of living in a civilized world. And above all, he needs an owner with a great
sense of humor who can appreciate him for what he is, and not hate him for what he does,
because even if he is well trained, he will occasionally slip. Roger Caras said it all so
well in his book "A Celebration of Dogs". We feel he must have known Weimaraners
well. Please read, and believe the following:
THE WEIMARANER
The Weimaraner, one of Germany's top sporting dogs, dates back less than two hundred
years. It was meticulously developed by noble sporting patrons at the court of Weimar. It
was a snob sporting dog developed and jealously guarded by one of the biggest collection
of snobs the dog world has ever seen. You were right or you couldn't get your hands on
one. Bloodhound stock clearly played a large role at the beginning, as did a German breed
not known in this country, the red schweisshund. The Weimaraner is a first cousin to the
German shorthaired pointer.
The Weimaraner is a perfect example of a highly refined breeding experiment that paid off,
but it did produce a breed that is exactly right for some kinds of people and perfectly
dreadful for others. The snobs of Weimar weren't entirely wrong in the degree to which
they protected their creation.
The solid mouse to silver-gray Weimaraner with its short, dense coat is a dog that simply
must have early obedience training or it is capable of being a first-class pest. It is
headstrong, willful, adoring, incredibly intelligent, and responsive to praise. When a
Weimaraner doesn't know what it is supposed to do it can be counted on to do all the wrong
things. I have known Weimaraners whose owners had not bothered to train them or teach them
manners to go through a plate-glass picture window because they had been left home alone
too long and were bored, bless them. I knew of one that dragged a charred log from a
fireplace and pulled it from room to room chewing charcoal off as it went. It took a
professional cleaning firm to repair the damage. It could have burned the house down.
That kind of flaky behavior must be seen in contrast to the well-managed dog, however, or
it gives a distorted picture. A well-trained Weimaraner is a regal accomplishment of
canine genetic art, and as intolerably ill-behaved as a mis-managed specimen can be, that
is how extremely good, solid, and reliable a properly raised example will be. It is one of
those dogs, and this is so often true of the sporting dogs, that it is what you want it to
be. Few dogs can be more of a nuisance than an Irish setter, a vizsla, or a Weimaraner
that has had its vital energy levels, its need to perform, and its exuberant love affair
with life ignored. They need exercise, they need training, and they need opportunities to
participate in vigorous, ongoing events. You ignore those facts at considerable risk to
your property. I have known very few sporting dogs that had anything at all wrong with
them except their owners.
- ROGER CARAS -
A Celebration of Dogs.
