A couple of years ago, when daughter graduated from high school, she wanted a dog for her graduation gift. Of course she wanted something big and powerful, and this meant German shepherd.
Not having a huge amount of money to spend on such a critter, we kept an eye on the humane society, where one Saturday evening, Mrs. Peril found this fellow, Blade, at the Oregon Humane Society.
He was listed as a German Shepard, so the very next day, the whole family was down at the Humane Society where we were the first ones admitted to the building. They brought in Blade and he was the friendliest puppy (aged about 1 year) one could ask for.
He had been turned in to a shelter in eastern Oregon because his owner was ill and could not care for him any more. He had come to OHS on their “second chance program.” (I can’t imagine having to lose such a beautiful animal). And he was mostly trained too.
The OHS people said they thought he was possibly a Lapponian Herder, or, Finnish, lapinporokoira, which I had never heard of. Turns out this is an “open breed” at least in the U.S., so that if your dog looks like the breed, it is the breed, no need for papers and all that snooty rubbish (which does the dogs no good).
Most of the dogs of this type appear to be found in Europe. A nice video showing how wonderful these dogs can be is below (I think the title is Swedish, meaning “Summer training at Njarga, 2013):
x YouTube VideoAnyhoo, check out the good word of your local humane society, In Oregon, for example here, and please don’t be apprehensive about ending personal petlessness.