German Shepherd Dog archive tees, sweatshirts and hoodies

Max von Stephanitz set out in 1899 to standardise Germany's herding dogs into a single working type, registering Horand von Grafrath as the first of the breed. The job was tending: patrolling the edge of an unfenced flock all day, a living boundary rather than a driver. That endurance and biddability moved the breed into police and military work within a generation. Owners know the shadowing, a dog that relocates every time you change rooms and settles again with a sigh, and they know the coat, which comes away in handfuls twice a year and in smaller instalments the rest of the time. The plate concentrates on the line of the back and the set of the ears, drawn alert but unexaggerated, closer to the working dog than to the show ring.