I can’t really speak for training the GSD as a puppy. I had one as a teen and he was a great dog, but he came to us as an adult. We lived out in the country, well off of any main road, and he had the run of the countryside. The farmers loved him because he hunted and killed groundhogs. He had a self-taught hunting method in tall grass that was amusing to watch, he’d start springing up over the top of the tall grass, boing boing boing, rapidly looking left and right the whole time. It flushed whatever he was after, and he could see it from above. Smart boy.
I can say that a male Lab puppy from a field bred line is going to be a hellion until he’s about three years old. They’re very eager to learn and very fixated upon their people, but they’ll retrieve or swim or go go go until they drop. Giving them a task, a job to do does wonders. You need at least a large enclosed back yard if not acreage, and if you don’t have surface water on your property a big, heavy duty baby pool will get used a great deal.
I’d probably be more interested in the Shepard over a Lab. My little terrier if she’d been a big dog, I can’t even get my mind around that one...lol She kept me busy for 2 years before she finally settled down. She’s a wonderful little dog, smart and she listens pretty well. She’s like a little clown, I love her personality. I’m not sure getting a large breed dog right now is a good idea, because of my terrier, she does not play well with other dogs...lol But, I’m starting to look. I just know I want to get another dog sometime in the near future and am looking seriously at Shepard’s.
I would find your local GSD club, find out what activities their dogs are doing and go watch. Talk to breeders. Don't buy the first dog you see.
Talk to freekitty, she's a GSD person.
As far as Labs, the best way to find a breeder is to check out the hunting clubs. Watch the dogs doing what they were bred to do. If you don't want a full-blown field dog, it's a cinch that a pup or two in any given litter will be a more mellow boy or girl and perfect for a house dog that you might want to shoot over occasionally or take to a hunt test just for fun.
My girls are mixed field and show breeding, in varying proportions. But the show lines are NOT the block-headed, short-legged, fat ones. There are still a couple of kennels (Dickendall and Kerrybrook, for two) that breed what they call "dual purpose Labs" - and those are my show lines.
Mary Howley of Candlewood Kennels, who is probably the best field trial breeder in the country, uses show lines for outcrosses. My little black Lab that I got from her is 1/4 conformation (Kerrybrook) and she is PLENTY high-energy. We just finally have her to where you can hold a conversation with her, at age three. Before now she was all drive, no brain. But that's to be expected with her breeding, she's an 2xNFC/AFC Ebonstar Lean Mac granddaughter, they mature late, even for Labs.
My oldest dog was sired by an English show dog, at least the British show dogs have to pass a hunting test in order to put champion in front of their names. It's pretty pitiful when the "Pigadors" come out to try to get a Working Certificate on their dogs and the poor things are waddling in the general direction of the bird . . . slowly, and sometimes showing no interest at all when they get there.