provide some examples of any endurance based animal (dog or not) that is shaped like a gsd. - Page 16

Didn't Max decide in the early development that herding would be less and less a job for dogs, and that the dogs needed to be re-purposed for other jobs?

The function changed, not the form. Stephanitz didn't seek to change the dog, he sought to find other venues to prove breed worthiness.  If we want to understand how much the breed has changed, we can only try to discern survival characteristics of the foundation dogs, ignoring type, and compare those dogs to the present dogs of ALL lines. GSDs were not originally intend to be sport dogs, show dogs, Sch dogs, they were tending dogs.

I remember reading something about increasing size and weight for police work, as a small dog is not intimidating and couldn't take down and hold someone.

BUT that was not the original purpose of a GSD.

Blitzen - absolutely right.  Your first link (genetic origin)  makes
excellent reading;  I really recommend everyone to at least read
in full the section on "Boundary Instinct", in view of the above
conversation about sheep work.

Yes Joan, I do mainly mean you, because in your first post when
you raised that old spectre of the hyena, you then went straight
into the Painted Dog's hunting ability as if you were talking about the
same beastie.  [But no one else pointed out a difference as they talked
about both / either animal}.

I don't actually see that it makes much diff. to the lower spine related
​conditions whether the wither is higher or lower than the croup.
Anyway, that AKC Greyhound in SM's post shows that isn't true, I
didn't think it was !

Yeah, I was aware vk's pic might have been a Musk Ox  (ask the Admins
or Bee about my abilities in identifying species )  ...  but then I wouldn't
have been able to crack my "Yakkety Yak" joke, right ?  And whichever
it is, its still the wrong shape for this topic.
 

Working Dogs, an Attempt to Produce a Strain of German Shepherds which Combines Working Ability and Beauty of Conformation -1934
Elliot Humphrey and Lucien Warner

The wl/sl battle has been going on for so many years......even back in 1934, people were trying to develop a GSD with beauty and work ability.

Its a good read, and goes into much detail about the Fortunate Fields program which started in 1924.

It was interesting to see that the studs had BOTH working and show line progeny. Mixing of the races is something that isn't done very often now. Not sure why. I've seen plenty of beautiful working line dogs and also some very able show line dogs.

I enjoyed Chapter IV "Our Theoretically Ideal Dog".

Check this out.  Most or all the judges think these are jaw-dropping awesome specimens, beautiful.  But for me, something is wrong here, according to my uneducated judgment, I can see it with my untrained eyes.  They are experts, I am not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU1IZyUv6Yk

If you leave them in the wild, they can not survive because they are not structurally sound and functional to hunt and defend there selves.  Thru natural selection they will be eliminated, and only the ones with the sound structure will survive to carry on their species.