Judge isn’t doing very well. He is suffering from Abnormal Limb Deformity.
Meanwhile, he can barely walk and he’s his own worst enemy, due to his high threshold and drive. Outside, when I’d let him off leash, he’d run and run and run and would do more damage than anything good to his leg. He’s been x-rayed, we have three different opinions, we’ve been at a specialist and he needs an expensive surgery and no promise of success was made.
Either way, I had to wash him out of the SAR Training Program but he remains as a pet in my household and I love him dearly. It sucks because he was such a promising dog and all it took was one wrong step to squish his growing plate.
Anyhow, the Specialist said that he’s not doing anything without having his overall orthopedic health checked. Meaning, his hips need to be okay in order to proceed. If he has bad hips on top of everything else, and seeing that he can barely walk as it is, I will release him from the pain.
So far I’ve had people say from: “Don’t have him undergo surgery, just let him be” to “You know, amputation is an option, dogs can live long and prosper on three legs, most of the time they don’t even know that they have three legs only.”
It’s tough. He’s just eight months old, way to young for that. But life isn’t fair…
I know already that people will judge me if I put him down due to all the health issues. They would rather see me crating him for the rest of his life, just for the sake of keeping him alive. It’s not going to happen. Not with a driven dog like him. It would be more cruel to keep him alive in a crate than putting him out of his misery.
Sometimes people have to come to their senses, accept the truth and life as it is. The outcome is not always what we want it to be. And if a dog, at that age, can’t walk because of his condition and has HD on top of it, the only humane thing would be to let him go to the rainbow bridge.
So let’s hope and pray that he’s got clean hips so we can go from there to give him the chance to live as a happy pet.
sturmfalken.com 
I'm afraid it's a common problem with German Shepards. Of course, buying from a good & responsible breeder helps but it's the risk you take once you decide on a GS 😦
It's not genetics. It could have happened with any breed. It's an injury that isn't bound to any breed it's young dogs in general. It could have been a Retriever, Dachshund, Border Collie. It's life…
I work at a vet's and have two shepards myself. We do have loads of dogs coming in but I have never seen any other breed with this kind of problem (and one of mine had the same issue at 4 years). Not sure what's causing this in my environment then.
We charge $250 for the x-rays btw but we're almost at the other side of the US.