#‘Australian barkers and biters’ by Robert Kaleski

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Alsatian dog breeders showing off their dogs at Randwick racecourse, c. 1934

The ‘Alsatian Wolf-dog Menace’

Kaleski went on to warn that the danger of Alsatians that crossbred with dingoes would create such a problem that ‘all stock would have to be permanently guarded and that boundary riders, stockmen and drovers will have to work in armed numbers or else they would be killed and eaten’.

Kaleski then went on the full offensive, telling his gaping audience that the German police used their German shepherd police dogs as instruments of terror. ‘The German police preferred a dog capable of serious attack. Their law, unlike Australian justice, does not presuppose innocence until guilt is proved.’ With the hide of Jessie the Elephant, he accused German law of doing what he himself had done to the Alsatian: presuming guilt without a speck of evidence.

‘In Germany, there is nothing like our sensitiveness to public opinion with regard to people being bitten. The German police-dog is a powerful animal capable of great severity. One sees persons being constantly attacked in Germany by such dogs in a manner that would never be tolerated over here.’

Kaleski could not have done more to vilify a breed of dog, not to mention Germans and German coppers. He added a lame, insincere declaration that he had nothing at all against the breed. It wouldn’t have placated or convinced Alsatian owners, or anyone else with anything between their ears.

The ill-informed and discriminatory way the Australian federal, State and Territory legislators managed the ‘Alsatian wolf-dog fiasco’ was a stark contrast to the attitude of the rest of the world. While Australia was treating the German shepherd dog like a mindless killing machine, and its owners like second-class citizens, in other nations it was the dog of choice for police, the military, and search and rescue organisations. It was the first seeing-eye dog, and won bravery awards, obedience awards, community service awards and agility awards. It starred in twenty-seven movies and a 166-episode television series (in which no sheep were harmed).

The German shepherd was considered the most talented dog in the world. It just took Australia forty-five years to work out it had been conned. But there’s your federal leadership for you.

Saving the Australian wool industry from the imaginary menace of the Alsatian wolf-dog was Robert Kaleski’s most notable achievement. He would release several editions of Australian Barkers and Biters and would write and publish Dogs of the World in 1947. Its execrable subtitle, ‘Showing the Origin of the Canine and Feline Species from the Australian Marsupial Lion About Three Million Years Ago’, is enough to demonstrate that nothing had changed Kaleski’s laughable biological theories since he first published Australian Barkers and Biters in 1914.

He died aged eighty-four, on 1 December 1961, the year The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin premiered in Australia. Rinnie was the most popular dog in the country, but banned nonetheless. And no one seemed to notice or mind that The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin was set fifty years before the German shepherd was even developed. Yo Rinnie!

Robert Kaleski’s importation ban was still in place when he died. And would be for another unlucky thirteen years.

⁠— The Dogs That Made Australia by Guy Hull (2018)

#dog books #dog quotes #German Shepherd #dog bans #dog history #Australia #Australian history