A breed with a founding date
Most breeds fade into existence. The German Shepherd has a date, a place and a founder. In 1899 a former cavalry officer named Max von Stephanitz went to a dog show in Karlsruhe and bought a working shepherd’s dog called Hektor Linksrhein, because it had the build, the temperament and the willingness he had been looking for. He renamed the dog Horand von Grafrath, entered him as the first German Shepherd Dog in the first stud book, and founded the Verein für Deutsche Schäferhunde, the club that still holds the breed in Germany.
Von Stephanitz was not trying to make a handsome dog. The German countryside was full of local herding dogs, each region with its own type, and he set out to standardize the best of them into one working breed. His principle is usually quoted as utility and intelligence: a German Shepherd should be judged by what it can do, and good looks follow function rather than the other way round.
The original job is worth picturing, because it is not the job most people imagine. German shepherds tended flocks on unfenced land, patrolling the line between the sheep and the crops all day, trotting the boundary, turning strays back, making decisions on their own for hours at a stretch. That work asks for a dog that is tireless, biddable and able to think without being told. Everything the breed went on to do grew out of that description: police and military work, search and rescue, detection, and the guide dog work that began in the 1920s with German Shepherds.
The American Kennel Club recognized the breed in 1908. In Britain it spent much of the twentieth century under the name Alsatian, a change made after the First World War and reversed in the 1970s. And a puppy found in France in 1918 by an American serviceman, brought home and named Rin Tin Tin, did more for the breed’s popularity than any stud book ever could.
Built to trot all day
An adult male stands about twenty-four to twenty-six inches at the shoulder and a female about twenty-two to twenty-four, with weight running roughly from fifty to ninety pounds depending on sex and line. The dog is longer than it is tall, and that is deliberate. The proportions exist to produce the long, low, ground-covering trot the breed is known for. Watch one move and the whole design makes sense at once: the back stays level, the reach comes from the shoulder, and the dog seems to cover ground without spending anything.
The head is clean and strong, the muzzle long, the eyes medium-sized, dark and almond-shaped, with an expression the standard calls keen and intelligent. The ears are large, upright and open to the front, and puppy ears are one of the small pleasures of raising this breed. They come up somewhere between about two months and six months, often one at a time, and often several times before they decide to stay. A puppy with one ear up and one ear folded is doing exactly what it should be doing.
The coat and the colours
The standard coat is a double coat of medium length: a dense, straight, close-lying outer coat over a thick undercoat, with a little more length around the neck and down the backs of the legs. There is also a long-coated variety, softer and more heavily feathered, and it turns up in litters from standard-coated parents. Both are proper German Shepherd coats.
Colour is where owners have the strongest opinions. Black and tan is the picture most of us carry, but black and red, sable, bi-colour and solid black are all part of the breed. Sable is the oldest colouring of the lot, and Horand himself was one; each hair is banded, so a sable dog changes shade as it moves and again as it matures. Puppies are born a great deal darker than they finish, and the tan or red pushes up through the black across the first year, which means the eight-week-old in front of you is not yet showing you its adult colour.
The routine that keeps the coat right is regular rather than long. A slicker brush and an undercoat rake two or three times a week keeps it lying properly and takes the loose hair out before it reaches the furniture. Twice a year, when the undercoat comes away in earnest, the same tools and a bit more patience over a fortnight do the job. Baths are occasional. Nails every few weeks, ears wiped out when you brush, teeth brushed as a matter of routine.
The bond with its person
Ask ten German Shepherd owners what makes the breed different and nine will tell you the same thing: the dog is completely, unmistakably yours. This is not a breed that spreads itself around. It picks a household, and usually a person inside that household, and organizes its whole day around them. It follows you from room to room, settles where it can see you, and waits by the door you went out of.
The standard describes a dog that is direct and fearless, confident and self-assured, and reserved rather than instantly friendly with people it has not met. In practice that reads as a dog that takes a moment with a new person, makes up its mind, and then relaxes completely. Once you are in, you are in for life.
They are also, famously, thinkers. A German Shepherd watches what happens in a house and draws conclusions from it: which coat means a walk and which means an errand, which drawer holds the leash, which member of the family is most likely to drop food. Living with one is a little like being read.
With children in the family they are patient and devoted, and the breed’s standing as a family dog has held for more than a century for good reason. Give the dog a bed of its own somewhere central, where it can see the room without being in the middle of it, and a large dog becomes an easy one to have indoors.
Training a dog that wants a job
Very few breeds are this easy to teach. A German Shepherd puppy picks up sit, down, a recall and a settle quickly, and then wants to know what else there is. The trick is simply to keep giving it something to learn, because a German Shepherd with a job in front of it is the most contented version of the breed.
Short, varied sessions work far better than long repetitive ones. Ask for one thing at a time, mark it the instant it happens, pay well, and stop while the dog still wants more. Loose-leash walking deserves real investment in the first year, because a dog that will grow to eighty pounds should learn what a leash means while it still weighs twenty.
Socialization through the first six months is the piece not to skip: new floors, new people, car rides, umbrellas, hats, bicycles, calm adult dogs of a range of sizes. A German Shepherd that met the world early grows into a settled, easy adult.
Beyond obedience, look at what the breed was built for. Scent games in the yard, a food puzzle, fetch with rules, a long line and a find-it cue, and later on obedience classes, rally, agility, tracking, dock diving or herding. Any of it will do. A German Shepherd does not much mind what the job is, only that there is one.
A day with a German Shepherd
Mornings are for movement. A real walk, forty minutes or more at a pace that suits both of you, with sniffing time built in rather than hurried past. In a Florida or Tennessee summer the early and late hours are the good ones, with shade and water in between.
The middle of the day is for lying down somewhere with a view of the room, one ear still tracking the house. German Shepherds are excellent at doing nothing, provided they have already done something.
Afternoons want a job. Ten minutes of training, a puzzle feeder, a toy hidden in another room to go and find. A German Shepherd that has used its head settles in a way that running alone never quite produces.
Evenings belong to the family, and this is a dog that wants to be in the room for them. It will lie across a doorway where it can see everyone, get up when you get up, and end the night asleep with its back against the sofa. A second short walk after dinner rounds things off.
Coming to meet the German Shepherd puppies
Photographs flatten this breed. Bone, coat texture, the size of the feet, the way a puppy sits back on its haunches and studies you for a second before it comes over, all of that is first-hand information. Littermates differ far more in temperament than they do in markings, and it is worth seeing how much dog you are choosing before you choose it.
Our German Shepherd puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can tell you what a particular puppy’s parents were like and what to expect as a large-breed puppy grows. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit on the floor with a puppy before deciding anything. Find directions and hours, and ask about financing while you are here. Every puppy here goes home with its vet records, its vaccination history and a health warranty, and our team will walk you through what those cover.