The first few years of the new 20th century in America were heady ones for the amazing breed that Captain Max von Stephanitz began to standardize in 1889, the German Shepherd Dog.

In 1907, a year before the AKC recognized the breed, the first exhibition of the GSD in America was a bitch named Mira von Offingen who’d been imported by Otto Gross. Mira was out of Beowulf x Hella vom Schwaben, and some say that Beowulf’ is significant in the breed because he and his related bloodline are the ancestors of all German Shepherds today. Mira, handled by one Mr. H. Dalrymple from Allegheny, Pennsylvania, was entered in the open class at Newcastle and Philadelphia where she garnered the attention of both spectators and other exhibitors. A year later, Myra was shown at Westminster in the Miscellaneous Class in 1908.  That said, one source writes that accounts of Mira’s impact on her breed were anecdotal at best, and that she was neither registered nor bred.

The honor of being the first AKC registered GSD in America came a year later in 1908 with “Queen of Switzerland” (AKC # 115006) bred by Herman Troesch and owned by Adolph Vogt. Described as a grey dog with a black saddle, she was also the first GSD to appear in the AKC Stud Books.

Seven German Shepherd Dogs were shown at Westminster in 1912, and a year later, the owner of one of those dogs, Anne Tracy, would help found the German Shepherd Dog Club of America along with Benjamin Throop. In its first days, the club had twenty-six members.  Also in 1913, two German Shepherd Dogs earned the first championship awards, one, a dog named “Luchs” (owned by Anne Tracy) along with another dog named “Hera von Ehrangrund.”

In 1915, the club published “Schooling and Training the German Shepherd Dog” written by Max von Stephanitz, and also held its first specialty show in Greenwich, Connecticut with a now familiar name, Anne Tracy, judging the entries.

As America became poised to enter the war in 1917, the club name was changed to the Shepherd Dog Club of America as a means of distancing itself from anything having to do with Germany. As an aside, the AKC went back to using the original name of German Shepherd Dog in 1931, but it wasn’t until 1977 that the British Kennel Club followed suit.

The coming years would see the breed distinguish itself in a variety of ways, and we’ll cover those hallmarks in another post.

Image: Photo of Beowulf, sire of Mira von Offingen, the first GSD exhibited in America