The breed gallery
German Shepherd
The German Shepherd is not yet a hundred and thirty years old and yet the best-known working dog in the world. In 1899 the cavalry captain Max von Stephanitz chose a single herding dog as its founder and wrote a standard around him that selected for usefulness, not for beauty.
For a portraitist the Shepherd is a head with direction: the ears point, the gaze points, and the whole animal seems to be looking at something outside the frame.
- Origin
- Germany, 1899 — set down by Max von Stephanitz
- Coat
- double, as stock coat or long stock coat; black and tan, sable, or solid black
- Height
- males roughly 60 to 65 centimetres; females roughly 55 to 60 centimetres
- Weight
- roughly 22 to 40 kilos
- Life expectancy
- roughly 9 to 13 years
- Character
- self-assured, trainable and willing to work — a dog that asks for a task
Character
The breed was built to work and that has not been bred out of him. A German Shepherd learns quickly, attaches himself strongly to his people and wants to know what is expected of him; uncertainty unsettles him more than effort ever does.
Towards strangers he is reserved without being hostile — a dog who looks first. That combination of sharpness and self-control has made him the standard dog of police, army and rescue services for a century.
Appearance and coat
The coat is double: a hard, close-lying topcoat over a woolly undercoat. The classic black and tan is the best known, but sable — the wolf-coloured pattern in which every hair ends dark — and solid black belong to the breed just as much.
A German Shepherd does not pose; he stands ready, and that bearing carries any portrait.
The head is noble and clean-lined with a straight bridge, dark almond eyes and ears that stand upright and point forward. The back runs in a flowing line to the hindquarters — a line that has been debated in the breeding world for decades.
Care
Brush twice a week, daily during the moult: this breed sheds its undercoat in clouds. Exercise and work weigh more heavily than coat care — and when acquiring one, ask about the hip and elbow screening of the parent dogs.
History
At a dog show in 1899 Max von Stephanitz bought the herding dog Horand von Grafrath and registered him as the first of the new breed. Within a few decades the German Shepherd had gone from herding dog to police and army dog; the Rin Tin Tin films then made him world-famous.
The portrait
Your German Shepherd as an art portrait
The Shepherd calls for styles with authority and with greys: the transition from black to tan is the hardest and the finest thing his coat has to offer. Photograph in profile or three-quarters with the ears upright — that carriage is the portrait.
