What is the German shepherds future outlook?

Answer 1

As a whole there is no definite answer, but I suspect considering the current trends and where the past trends have lead us, there is going to be a lot more division of the breed.

In the past, there was one type of GSD and no other variations. They came in a few colors (Black/Tan, Sable, Brindle though that was bred out, Black, and White), and type was relatively unified (when I refer to type I mean the breed's general appearance). They actually resembled the Malenois when they were first developed. Not until the 1930's did the first split in the GSD occur. That was the eradication (or attempted eradication) of the white dogs because of confusion regarding the color. White was considered the same as albino, and was wrongly credited for diluting color.

The next few splits happened during the war, Czech Rep. and Russia tried their hand at breeding the GSD, and the Czech line of GSD's was created. There was at one point a very large and well known kennel in the Czech Rep. who bred police dogs, and today they are considered the GSD type with the most drive and best equipped naturally for police work. They are generally smaller and come in either bicolor or sable though other colors are sometimes seen.

The next split came with the Berlin split after the war. The GSD's on the western (capitalist) side of Germany werent needed for police work as often, and so there rose up a difference between the show dogs of West Germany, and the working dogs of west germany (working in the sense that they were still bred to and competed in protection sports such as schutzhund). To this day there is little difference between West German working and West German show, though working dogs tend to be bred with other types to improve performance.

On the other side of the Berlin Wall, the side occupied by Russia, Berlin became a police state, and the Eastern GSD's (also called DDR) were the dog of choice for police work. They had the hardest drive of any GSD type, but today there are no pure versions of this variety and they are almost all mixed with some other type.

When the GSD was accepted in America around the 1960's and the standard was brought over from Germany, we adopted the prejudice of white dogs as well. White up until this point was not seldom seen, but in America and some other countries, breeders began picking up and breeding white dogs. The trend has continued, but because there werent many outlets for the breed to compete many white GSD's have lost the drive they once had. Because the colored GSD people simply will not accept the color into the standard, there have been efforts to make the WGSD a separate breed entirely. Already in a few countries in Europe the WGSD is considered a separate breed (The Berger Blanc or the American White Shepherd, or the White Swiss Shepherd), and considering the trend it will probably continue to evolve in that direction.

The colored varieties have seen huge splits in the Americas for many many reasons, but I'll try and be brief as possible. There are basically 2 lines in America: AKC Show, and American Pet.

AKC show dogs you will mostly see in the ring, and like their white counter parts they have also lost much of the old drive, resulting in mostly weak willed dogs that lack much of the soundness and quality of their older cousins. Because these dogs are primarily bred for extreme angulation and the 'flying trot' there is no need to work these dogs, and you essentially end up with unruly GSD's that only have the skill of walking in circles and being pretty.

The American Pets are a huge gammit of dogs mixed between AKC show and other various types. Because of the largely unplanned and unethical breeding practices of many people in the US, recessive genes started to crop up such as the Liver dilution and the Blue dilution. So far they have not yet filed for being separate breeds but with the addition of the Panda GSD they may. The Panda variety supposidlly came out of American Showlines, and the white spotting pattern is a mutation that is passed down. Besides coat there is no difference between this variety and the American Show or American Pet. They are of the same lesser quality than their working counter parts.

Considering all of this...

Its a safe bet to assume that the trend of making every separate variety of GSD its own breed. We will probably see more Panda GSD's being advertised as a separate breed, and I've even been told that there has been an effort to create the American Alsation, which is most likely going to be the generic new term for American Pet variety, which people will attempt to pass off as a separate breed, thus repeating the same problems with the White GSD.

There is also a huge number of people starting to breed old type GSD's (The King Shepherd, and Shiloh Shepherd) by either breeding old type poor quality stock with no drive (In the case of the Shiloh) or by introducing other breeds to give the dog size and power (In the case of the King, which has Malamute and Pyreneese among other things). I cant understand these attempts personally. The GSD was never meant to be a large breed, and is supposed to have plenty of working drive, but these two varieties are only really good as pets or show dogs, so breeding them almost seems pointless, but I also fear this is what we should expect in the future.

With the need for working dogs dwindling, the GSD has become subject to a myriad of changes and transformations. This once amazing powerful working breed has been divided again and again til we have only a handful of good working types left, and the rest are being picked up and bred by people who either want to create their own separate breed for the sake of creating it, or to preserve a particular color or type, or simply because they want a pretty dog.

All in all my guess is that in the future we will continue to see new colors cropping up (there arent any blue merle GSD's yet, someone should get on that one) and more and more attempts at making these separate types their own breed. I also assume we'll be seeing more loss of performance ability especially in America. Most likely they will lose all their natural instinctive drive, and become more like large Labrador's who only look fierce, but lack the ability to back it up. Or consequently, we'll see a lot more dogs developing behavioral issues from poor breeding and the desire to keep up with the demand for all the new flashy GSD related breeds.