Standards are drawn up by visionaries.   By Ultimate Show Breeders whose love for their breeds has been written into words.   These people looked at what they had in dogs, and they saw what could be.  They followed the path of beauty and, inspired, described their ideal dog.

Standards change because the Ultimate Show Breeders get smarter all the time.   The more time we spend in the show ring, the more we understand how correct conformation enhances a dog's ability to fulfill it's original purpose.

In some cases, the rather poor specimens seen at the time the standards were written were not even capable of inducing the vision of all the improvements a hundred years could bring.   By today's champions those old dogs were of very poor style indeed.

For example, the German Shepherd Dog of today has a far superior structure and standard thanks to the Ultimate Show Breeders.   The Ultimate Show Breeders rigorously studied the gait of the dog around the show ring and realized a smooth, flying gait was far more effortless in appearance and therefore meant the dog would be much better suited to trotting (gliding) effortlessly after sheep.

Similarly, it was the Ultimate Show Breeders that realized the variation in the Rhodesian Ridgeback ridges were nothing less than a symptom of muttness and subsequently made the breed purer by standardizing the ridge hair growth pattern.

As our knowledge of correct structure and conformation improve, so must the standards so that the Ideal Dog is always the Perfect Dog and not an old fashioned, poorly structured specimen.

The endless list of Ultimate Show Breeder improvements includes the bulldog facial transformation (it is now closer to the intent of the standard than ever before!), the refinement of the shape of the Bull Terrier head, the increased coat plush of many breeds - poodles, spaniels to name a few.   As anyone can recognize, the longer, heavier coat will keep the dog warmer if it were to be exposed to the elements in a working situation.   Similarly, increased size of terriers obviously enables them to have a better chance at overpowering their prey.   These are no-brainer improvements, a direct result of the Ultimate Show Breeder continually getting smarter about the working structure of dogs.

All of this happens through the occasional pup that is recognized as being 'ahead of his time'.   That means occasionally genetics works in favor of the breeder, and produces features of unimaginable extremeness.   Of course the Ultimate Show Breeders immediately recognizes progress for what it is, and seizing upon the one or two dogs with advanced mutation, creates entirely new lines by breeding and breeding back again to produce as many puppies as possible with the new extremes.   These dogs then become the new foundations of the breed and the necessary updates to the breed standard are made.

In many cases, these improvements to the standard have changed the breed either structurally or emotionally to be all but completely unrecognizable to the old timers who had only a pet or a working dog.

As you can see from the dramatic changes we have made, in many cases these old timers trying to standardize their working dogs really knew very little about what elements give a dog superior working structure.   That has only been defined by years of study of thousands of dogs in the show ring, and carefully selective breeding to capture and perpetuate the most beautiful features of those dogs.

Remember, the perfect dog has never been bred!.