Please read this before breeding your dog with unknown background - you are not only NOT adding anything positive to the breed (as a whole) it's breedings like this that are the DOWNFALL of the GSD.
http://www.germanshepherds.com/foru...-losing-her-leg-today-eastern-wa-state-2.html
For those contemplating breeding your dogs who are not titled (sometimes not even registered) or health tested...think about Heidi.
She was most likely bred under the same circumstances - although a beautiful girl with a sweet temperament (and a FINE family companion!) she isn't anything special that when I look at her I can see that the breeder had specific goals in mind.
Most likely they just like the breed, they love their dogs and wanted to create more like them. Maybe they wanted to earn back some of the money they spent on the parents, or maybe not. I've heard that sentiment too many times to completely disregard it.
The problem is, any good potential buyers who can easily afford a dog up to (and sometimes over) $1200 aren't going to be surfing craigslist or the want ads searching for a puppy! No, they'll be asking about good breeders here on places like this, or going straight to AKC's websites to find good, quality breeders who breed to better the breed - not just because they have a male and female, or a female and their friend has a male. These buyers know what a crap shoot puppies can be, and want to stack the odds in their favor by going with breeders who health and temperament test their dogs.
So...dogs like Heidi wind up in a home where she was quite probably always an outside dog - maybe a fence, maybe not.
And one day she wasn't there. Either wandered off, or maybe even stolen.
A few days later the owner notices she's back, with a bad injury this time.
And now she's in rescue minus the leg which some idiot managed to damage irreparably.
For most breeders who breed their dogs just because they can, this is the fate of quite possibly half or more of the puppies in the litter.
Sometimes they wind up in great, lifelong homes. Most often, I'm willing to bet not.
This scenario repeats itself daily in our country. Shelters are overflowing with the surplus puppies and dogs that people had little to no commitment to in the first place, and those dogs must go somewhere.
I read statistics a while back that said an average person would have to own like, 5-6 dogs (per person in America) to take care of all the dogs already in this world.
I mean - per person! A family of 4? 20 dogs. Per family.
It really makes you stop and think, or it should.
I know the fates of dogs like this, because we're called daily to try to help them. We face, daily, the results of irresponsible breeding