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The history of the Hovawart
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An obscure German breed has the opportunity of becoming a "Yuppie Puppy" - one of the new fad breeds. What makes a breed a candidate for "Yuppiehood"? High price and rarity are two salient reasons. A "conversation piece"and a great breed. The Hovawart happens to be both a conversation piece and a great breed. It is one of the newest of the old breeds or, if you prefer, one of the oldest of the new breeds. Its written history goes back to l230, but the breed existed before that time.
Now that is antiquity! It was'nt reconaized until l936. And that is contemporary! The breed was "reinvented" in l922. A big strapping dog, it comes in three colours: golden or blond, black and tan and solid black. The males are an honest 28 inches at the shoulder. An important note is that the Germans are exact on their seizing of dogs, just as Americans, with their braggadocio, tend to exaggerate the size upwards on large dogs. (An American would describe the Hovawart as a 30-inch dog) With Toy dogs American under-value weight, which is bragging in the reverse. |
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The golden Hovawarts resemble Golden Retrievers with oversized ears badly set. They are indomitable guard dogs but not incessant barkers. They have the deserved reputation of having great noses, and for this reason, a dis-proportionately high percentage of them are qualified rescue dogs in their native Germany. The breed club fosters the use of the Hovawart for rescue and avalance work.
The only fault that we find with the breeds temperament is that we have seen owners working around the dog rather than making the dog work around them. The end results may be satisfactory, but we feel it is a harbinger of potential trouble with a breed which can be too assertive. As far as the breed's work as a guard dog, it does exceptionally well in man work and has a reputation as a hard-hitting but controllable dog.
The Hovawart name is a conundrum. The German name means "Guardian ('wart', archaic) of the Manor ('hof')". One authority stresses that it comes from the Old High German meaning "Wachter der Habe" or "Watchman of the Possesions". Our German translation into English carries more charm than the explanation from Sierts-Roth and Teacher's Das Constanze Hundebuch, but their explanation sounds eminently better in German.
The breed was reconstituted in 1922. Reconstruction or redevelopment of a breed is not an unusual occurance in the dog world. While fanciers may shudder when they are told that their breed were extinct for a period of time, it says a great deal for the fanciers and the breed as a whole, if there were people that took the time to reconstruct it. Two "ancient" breeds the Irish Wolfhound and the Mastiff were extinct and reconstituted in the 19th Century. It suits a noble purpose, and it is more honest than fancies' inventing history for a breed that lacks a long and ancient history.
The principal difference here is that the Hovawart breeders did not rewrite history. They redeveloped the breed and added the Hovawart to the 450 or so extant breeds.
The Wends, a fierce tribe, attacked a castle in which they conducted a pitches battle in the 13th Century Germany. Among the wounded victims of the battle was a large Hovawart. Wounded, the dog permitted a small child to climb on his back. Amidst the confusion, the dog carried the child to a neighboring village where the boy received care. Sachsenspiegel, an early lawbook. Not only was this the basic law book used in Germany, but it also was used in large areas of Poland, Hungary and Russia. The book - which appeared in 1230 - gave Eike a chance to sing the praises of his favorite breed. After all, if the Hovawart did not rescue him, little Eike would never have grown up to write the law books.
A later law book, The Schwabenspiegel, published about 50 years later, was vastly different from the previous book. The Hovawart was in this law book, too. The fine for killing or stealing a drover dog, a sighthound or Hovawart was three schillings. The fine for a lead dog or tracking dog was six schillings.
In 1922 Germany's Harz area had many farmers and forresters who were continually surrounded by dogs and other animals. They has a feel for the soil and animals. Around the "Stammtisch" (group table) at the "Kneipe" (local pub), Kurt F. Koenig and his friends used to come there. He zeroed in on his breed type consulting a copperplate engraving entitled " Ritter, Tod und Teufel" (Knight, Death and Devil), made in 1513 by German artist Albrecht Duerer. This allegorical picture was the first of Duerer's three master engravings, socalled because of their high technical and artistic excellence. Unknown to Koenig, this engraving was from a drawing made 15 years earlier in which the dog was not a Hovawart but a Mastiff. Duerer, taking artistic license, added long hair to the breed. This puts the Hovawart fanciers' argument that this dog was a Hovawart on shaky ground.
Incidently, a German judge would rate the Hovawart in the Duerer picture a " very good "( sehr gut ) rating , the second highest available. Another German misstatement is that the Hovawart is the newest German breed. The honor actually belongs to the even more obscure breed., the Kromfoerlander. Koenig was a man with a purpose, and he realized that type could be rapidly fixed by using an Old German Forest Dog that looked like the dog in Duerer`s engraving. Although Koenig rapidly developed the breed, most German dog books give more credit for the breedīs development to Duererīs engraving than to the seminal work done by Koenig.
It took the breed 14 years to be recognized by the RDH, the "German AKC " of that time.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they realized the importance of marshalling dogs and dog fanciers in a police state. Hitlerīs Germany had a ready cardre of trainers. This method is also used in some communistic dictatorships where dogs and dog training come under quasi-state organizations that conduct sports activities having military applications (e.g. sky and scuba diving, martial arts, shooting and skiing.) Today's overseeing organization in Germany is the VDH, which serves a function similar to the AKC but does not maintain stud books -which CKC does.
Registration in Germany is done by the individual clubs, which are recognized by CKC.
World War II naturally set back the progress made by the Hovawart breeders. Not only was breeding stock depleted, but food of any type was scarce and this was a large breed that required a lot of food. It was impossible to travel any distance to select stud dogs. After the war the fanciers started to rebuild the breed.
This is a terrific breed that has a great protential if it remains in the hands of responsible breeders rather than the quick buck artists. It has come a long way in 7― centuries - or is it half a century?
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