This is a question that you really need to look at. Bringing puppies in to this world is a 10 year responsibility for you the breeder. I know that you are thinking "no I will sell the pups and then it is the new owners responsibility." Any good breeder should take a puppy that they have bred back for any reason. If the new owner can't or won't take care of this pup, you should. You should not leave this up to the rescue groups, or worse the human society. This is your responsibility for the life of those pups.
"I am only going to have one litter, for my family and friends." Ok so maybe this is a plan. Here are a couple questions that I have for you.
Do you want to be on "call" for all of your friends and family, when something happens concerning this pup?
What happens if one of the pups come up with a health problem? How are you going to compensate your friend or family member? Because they will let you know about it.
Are you ready to hear "How much this puppy has cost us?" "He has torn up my couch, and destroyed the back yard, and he just acts like a crazy dog!" "I can't believe that your dog made such bad puppies." And all you want to say is TRAIN YOU DOG!!, this isn't my dogs fault, you didn't go to puppy class like I told you to. But no you can't because then you would be the "bad" guy and the family reunions, or outings with the friends.
And just to throw this in there. You paid good money for your pup, why shouldn't they have to too?
One other thing to keep in mind is that when you have puppies your life is taking care of them. No vacations, taking off to practices with the kids. You have to take care of mom, who will eat you out of house and home, and all the pups. Mom will not want your kids to be messing with her kids. She will be very moody about people coming in and out of the house. She will have to potty all the time, but not want to leave the pups, so she will have accidents right by her box. She will also ruin your yard when she starts to nest. She will dig holes all over the place. And when she is in season she will attract every stray male to your house for miles around. Plus German Shepherds bleed allot, you will have to keep her crated all day and only out for supervised potty time, because male dogs will go through a fence to get to her.
Then there is always the risk of loosing your girl during complications of labor. Yes this does happen. You can also loose the whole litter do to complications. These are things that you should really think about before you decide to breed your female.
