Are German Shepherds...

[cassie]

German Shepherds can be great dogs, but I can tell you this. Over the years when I or anyone I know has had trouble with dogs preying on livestock, the culprit is almost always a German Shepherd. A good friend of mine just recently found several of his prize goats shredded by a German Shepherd. He knows it was a German Shepherd because he saw it come sailing out an open barn window as he went to do chores. The window was over six feet above ground level but that was no obstacle to this dog.

 

[dainerra]

6 feet is little obstacle for many breeds of dogs. Even higher than that if the dog can jump and then pull himself up and over the top. My friend's yorkie once climbed two 8' chainlink fences when she was in heat so that she could get into the kennel with the male. And she weighed less than 4lbs

the world record GSD jump was set in 1930


There are a couple reasons that GSDs are frequently problems with livestock.
#1 among them is that the breed is incredibly popular and the vast majority of them are owned by idiots.
#2 they are smart dogs and if not properly trained and mentally stimulated they will make their own fun
#3 they are herding dogs. Any breed bred to herd is a potential danger to livestock because the instinct to herd is simply controlled prey drive. Training is required to take that instinct from chase down an animal to move the animal where the human requests.

 

[HenHouse4Life]

We have 3 GSD, and each and every one of them is incredibly sweet. My 3 year old shepherd goes right into the duck pen with me every single day to do chores. All 3 don't even bat an eye at our chickens when they free range. Our dogs have never attacked, never threatened to attack another animal or a person. The GSD, much like any other animal, will only be as kind and disciplined as the owners. People tend to classify breeds and make assumptions and it just isn't true. I'm not saying there are no bad GSD, but that in no way makes the whole breed bad. GSD, although a herding animal, were meant to protect , not to kill.

 

[Kessel23]

My family breeds german shepherds, they have been breeding them for around 13 years. We have a lot of them... Only whites and pandas. I train some of them, it is so easy to train them to not attack poultry, My girl Lupa never attacked them. She was bonded to me and I brought her out into the coop at 4 months and I did not attack the chickens so she did not. I have done some further work with her and she is excellent with all poultry and most birds now besides sandhill cranes. She is also trained not to chase deer which was pretty hard to do...

I think it is very important to train them not to chase deer because that has been the main cause of death for our dogs. Throughout the years we have had 18 dogs, 2 of them were hit by a car after they chased a deer through the streets. I also had trouble training my girl to not attack rabbits, she is fine with the ones in the hutch but the wild ones outside were so tempting to her when they would jump up and run. She could not see what it was and just saw that massive white tail bolting through the woods and she would chase after it and try to catch it to find out what it was.

Our most well trained dog was trained by my dad, he would attack almost nothing, I remember when I was young I would chase the chickens around and he would stop me. But he was not trained to be nice to cats and would try to kill them. If you want a german shepherd to be nice to animals you have to train it to be nice to all the animals you have around. If a GSD is trained not to attack chickens it does not mean he wont kill rabbits or sheep or cats. If you do not train your dog not to attack an animal then he will. If you do not train them to be nice to animals then, in my opinion, they will kill almost anything. They are not naturally nice to animals, no dog is.