dog breeding questions

[Okie Amazon]

In GSDs sables rarely win the AKC show ring, but in German conformation shows they do occasionally. For some reason, the same tastes that like hock-walkers also seems to favor black and tan or black and red.

 

[dutchhollow]

Yes, there are working lines out there with an off switch. You just need to do some research and find a breeder, who lives with the dogs and trains them.
I own/train/handle gs's (german shorthairs) and the 'off switch' should most definetly be there. At any time you can walk in my house and see 3 or 4 laying on the couch, and except for a greeting you wouldn't know they are in the house. Now turn them loose and thell them to 'hunt em up' and different story. But, we are 10 gens plus of dogs from responsible breeders all looking for the same thing.
You odd are better going for a hunting bred lab , look for toward ht dogs and nahra dogs then FT dogs maybe, then they are for show dogs, very few dc's in the breed (german shorthairs and brittanies have the most last I checked) there is a huge field/show split in the line. When people call me with a lab they want trained, I ask where it came from before I will take it. That said against my better judgement I took a client dog from a friend of a friend, a show bred golden, I told her I would keep it for a week and let her know what I thought. They just want a companion hunting dog (meat dog), not a ft champion (and he never would be that, lack of focus) but he does quarter, find and flush birds and retrieve them, I wouldn't believe it without seeing it, so they are out there, the odds are much better with hunting stock though.

 

[Jamie_Dog_Trainer]

In the last 20 years you'll see more sable Am-line sables in the show ring. But its more the classic black and tan, with a lot of the black and "tan" coloring washing out in to silver.