My first dog when I was about 7 years old was a German Shepherd, Princess. She once slept in my bed after I fell on a nail while recuperating. Anyway, I love the breed and have followed it a little over the past 40 years.

I have attempted to buy a male and female puppy for two reasons: protection & breeding.

I live in Mississippi and I don't know of any good breeder. There are a gazillion GSD breeders on the Internet and they charge a lot for their puppies; too much in my opinion.

I believe I saw where you don't give referrals so how does someone without any knowledge of what's good and what's bad decide who to buy a breeding pair from?

Thank you.

The first red flag to me is that you haven't owned a GSD in 40 years and the second is your self admittal that you don't know what's good or bad. Why on earth would I buy from a breeder that doesn't know a good dog from a bad one?

I don't really know what to say with out being to critical except you obviously have no idea the cost of raising a "breeding pair" then taking care of pups. Once again I don't want to sound too critical and I'll edit this if someone wants...but it continues to amaze and disappoint me that people will breed any two dogs that they can get their hands on with zero knowledge (book or hands on) of the breed.

I agree with Benjamin (:laugh: don't be shocked Benjamin :grin

I don't want to be harsh either but breeding dogs is an art, not a hobby. I do not view breeding as something that should just be done because someone wants to - whether it is because they like the breed, or just like their dogs, or think it would be fun, etc. Breeding should be left to experienced dog people with truly exceptional dogs.

You said you have attempted to get a male and female puppy.. not at the same time, I hope?! Raising two pups at once for protection, without proper facilities and having people to care for and assist in training both dogs, is just not a good idea. Have you ever worked with a high drive working GSD, or any other high drive working dog breed? Have you ever trained dogs in protection?

I am curious as to your idea of what is too expensive? I have paid upwards of $2500.00 for animals that were not, in my opinion, breeding quality. Granted they were not GSDs, they were Rottweilers. They were fantastic dogs, don't get me wrong, but were not breeding quality animals. I would gladly pay $5000.00 for a quality working line pup - whether GSD, Rottie, American Bulldog, Doberman, etc. To some people that is a lot of money, way too much for "an animal" but to me, it is nothing if I am getting a healthy and wonderful representative of the breed that is likely to mature into a great breeding quality working dog.

A responsible breeder takes a lot of time to select, train, compete, and otherwise prove the fact that their dogs are really an asset to the breed. There is a lot of time and money involved in producing top quality working dogs - hence the price of pups.

I am sorry if I am sounding harsh, I really do not mean to - but it sounds like you need to do a lot more research not just into the GSD as a breed, but into breeding (why, when, how etc.) training, raising and caring for pups, etc.

I am sure others will chime in here - hey you breeders out there, start talking!

Define your idea of protection, and why you feel you should breed.

Well Jim,
I don't know. Expensive is a realitive thing. What may be expensive to one person may be a reasonable price to another. In my part of the world Working lines start (if you know where to look, because they don't advertise) at about 1K up to the larger breeders that charge about 3k, WITHOUT BREEDING RIGHTS. As I'm not interested in breeding my best guess at breeding rights cost in the range of 2k to 5k higher for PUPPYS. For prove guality, ie. adult trained dogs I know it's not unusual to spend 15 to 20k, I know because the breeders of my last GSD spend at least that for her mother (ScH3)(they went to Germany and shopped for her. Er, that was late 1980 dollars so I in present terms that would make it somewhat higher).
Jim, how many dogs did you say you've owned.
GSD's are not the easiest dog to start with.

Randy

The one word 'Breeding' means that you want to make money or attempt to. thats a big mistake to a beginner of the Breed, and i know that for a fact, being a reletive beginner, not with Dogs had them for 60 years but with German Shepherd Dogs, they are a handful But i purposly bought a second Male Pup when our old Dog Died. So although they are Both Top Bred Working line Dogs there would be no mishaps regards Breeding, My aim is Schutzund and the Enjyoyment of the Bringing the Pups along,
I will tell you i have Ridden out Steeplechaser Race Horses for Top Trainers in England for 10 plus years, i have raced Pigeons at the highest level for 50 plus years, I have Trained and Competed in Martial Arts for 10 years until i got injured,
I have owned one year old 'Fred' the Oldest G.S Pup of the two we have since he was 8 weeks old , and those Two Dogs in that short time have given me as much enjoyment and Pleasure as the other Three hobbies in that much time, which span a near life time the pigeons is still ongoing.
Forget Breeding if you buy a working line G.S use it for what it likes to do 'Work', and enjoy doing it and meeting other like minded people, If you buy a showline then use the Dog for its best capabilities, But most of all treat the Dog as a Friend, not as a commodity

I own a working line GSD, but am not a breeder. So breeders, correct me if I am wrong, but don't you need to wait until the dog matures to be able to determine if it is suitable for breeding? In Germany, aren't working line GSD's required to have titles (that can only be earned by adult dogs) before they can be registered for breeding?

How would you know that puppies are suitable for breeding, unless you are going to bet on the genetics alone without waiting to see how those genes are expressed in the dogs?

A question for the really serious working line breeders: assuming you have a really great breeding pair, what percentage of the pups they produce will turn out to be suitable for breeding?

Over here the Male is a Top Performance Dog like Schh 111. and he has a clean bill of health like Hips and other Bones etc are Normal, plus DNA, The Females are the Same critria, Normally Schh 111 or 11, plus the Bones are Normal as per the Stud Dog. all in all the breeding Dogs are sound as can be But then you come to Genitices, thats a different story. That is where experince and Stock sense comes to the front, and i will say this and mean every word,
There are very few people who can be called the word 'Stockman' no matter wether it be in any form of breeding i.e Dogs, Horses , and Bird Life such as Racing Pigeons, to me a True Stockman is Born, you can of course learn and become good, but that true gift is with you from birth

While I humbly choose to disagree with the stock sense idea I do have some input on your dilemmia on getting a "breeding" pair of GSDs.

First thing to keep in mind is that dog breeding in the USA is a very very broken practice right now with signifigant barriers to entry. Getting into the breeding of quality dogs is a long term searching process (I'm in my second year), a ton of hob nobbing with potential breeders who may be willing to consider selling you a dog, searching for contracts with acceptable terms (I've found 4 acceptable dogs in my searches and none with contracts I could live with), and attempting to get credentials without owning a dog.

Here are a few pieces of advice I have:

Go to the events you're interested in. Sounds like you need to define what you're looking for in your dogs and get a stated goal. If this sounds like too much work maybe this isn't in your cards.

Join a club related to your interests.

Get a plan together for what your goal is raising dogs. Make changes around your home in preperation of these goals, kennels, yards, etc.

Research, research, research... like think grad student final paper only longer, more detailed.

Be prepared for disappointment. Odds are the first person to offer you a pup will not be the pup you want. Don't take something because it's easy. Take it because it's the right thing. The life of a dog these days is a long term affair (my two dogs died of old age at 18 and 14) and the wrong dog can bankrupt you with vet bills, burn your expectations, and odds are will live just as long as the right dog.

Rich, not just working lines. Both working and show lines are required to have working titles as well as a show rating in order to breed and register the litter with SV.

Now, I am not a breeder, nor do I know if I would ever breed GSD pups, there's other breeds I'd rather breed, but thats a different story. However, I've spent enough time around good breeders to understand how the world works.

The problem with breeders is that most of them, even working line breeders, even those with decent reputations, are breeding for "The type of dog I can handle". Afterall, how is a breeder going to handle their breeding dogs if they aren't good enough handlers to handle them? So people breed dogs they CAN handle. If the breeder can't handle a VERY SERIOUS dog, then they will never produce VERY SERIOUS pups. The goal of breeding is to produce a dog that is as good, or maybe better than the sire. This is rarely the case, so to produce really good dogs, you need EXTREME breeding stock.

I can count the number of breeders that I know HAVE/OWN these types of dogs on one hand (figuratively speaking), which is sad. But there are SO MANY GSD's being bred, working lines too, and SO FEW people who can actually handle truly great dogs, that you just have to look at the numbers to see that finding the types of dogs that will keep the breed strong is getting harder and harder.

Not only are breeders not breeding truly strong dogs, but on top of that, most people looking to buy GSD pups are rarely looking for the types of dogs that I describe. When a breeder has a really great litter, often the pups get returned because the buyers just can't handle the dogs. Just look at the number of threads over the years on this forum alone with people complaining that their puppy nips. Nipping is NOTHING compared to what I've seen some pups do. I think Lee Sternberg on this forum has recently been enlightened as to how intense some puppies can be

So many breeders start breeding watered down versions for the sake of being able to sell them. Talk to any Malinois breeder and they will tell you that most of their pups end up in "performance/active homes". Placing working pups gets more difficult the tougher the dogs are.

Then you get all these people with mentalities like, "I really want a puppy out of my dog because he's great, so I'm gonna breed him", or "I love GSD's so I want to breed them". If you start a breeding program with puppies, you need to prepare to buy more than 2 puppies, and be willing to sell them at 9-18 months old if they turn out to not be suitable for breeding. You will go through alot of puppies to find the right ones!

Hypothetically, someones best bet as a new breeder is to look for a really great adult female (will cost you alot of money, don't buy just any female offered to you at a good price!), and then pay for stud fees from a proven producer that would go well with the bloodlines of your female. If you are REALLY lucky then the litter will have 2 or 3 good dogs, and a bunch of average dogs. If you are less lucky, you will have MAYBE 1 good dog, a bunch of average dogs, and a few that should just go to non-protection active homes for Flyball or Dock Diving or whatever the heck people do with their dogs that don't bite

I know, a lot of people have their heart set on starting a breeding program. It's a human thing, and I understand "why". But at the same time, I don't really get it. People always seem to want to breed dogs, but I have never heard a really good explanation from a novice as to "why" they are breeding the dogs. Odds are they are too inexperienced to handle a dog that is worth breeding, so then what are they breeding for? If they can't handle a great dog, don't have the money to buy a great dog to breed in the first place (like complaints about puppies being expensive), and couldn't identify a great dog if it bit them in the leg, then why breed? "To improve the breed" is the typical response here, but HOW? Does this person have some type of special ability to breed dogs better than people who have been producing champions for 20 years? OK so lets start with a puppy, and lets say you are going to a breeder that has produced dogs that went to championships and placed well. What makes you think this breeder will sell you a pup that will be worth breeding later on? If a breeder of this caliber sees great breeding potential in the pup, the pup will be held back. If the pup still shows promise at 9 or 12 months, then the pup is trained and then bred if he is doing well, otherwise he will get sold for way too much money to some shmo looking to start a breeding program thinking he's getting a good deal buying an adult dog from someone who has bred high caliber dogs, even though the dog they are buying was a washout.

Its a cruel cruel business ain't it???? Some people get lucky, but most people just breed watered down dogs that can be handled by the average weekend-schutzhunder, who then thinks their dog is oh so great and goes on to breed that dog to another watered down dog. Then where are we???

For someone who is serious about breeding, spend the money to buy a really good female, and pay the stud fees, and only after you have spent at least a couple years researching bloodlines and learning about the traits of the different dogs, and SEEING ALOT OF DOGS. Once you know what to look for, and have seen alot of dogs, you can start to pick out the types of dogs that you should be looking for and pick which lines you think will produce the best for your own breeding program.

There will always be lesser dogs, easier to handle dogs and weaker dogs in a litter of very strong parents, the problem is when those easier to handle dogs are bred. If strong dogs can still produce weaker dogs, then why are people producing weaker dogs for people who can't handle the stronger ones? Stick with breeding the strong ones and give the lesser dogs to the people that want an easier dog.