Thanks for the suggestion! I'll be looking at it!

Suppose I know all of the consequences of having these dogs, but still am a beginner dog owner. Does it make that much of a difference? Like, I know all of the consequences, so what benefit does being an experienced owner give me?

Ahh, alright! Thanks for the reply. Are GSDs easier for beginners than the others that I listed?

http://dogtime.com/quiz/dog-breed-selector

Yes by miles and even GSD's are not easy. You want to walk a dog off leash and yet nearly all the ones you favour can't be walked off lead. The Greenland that Azz suggested might look the way you want but is in no way suitable.

Experience gives you the forehand knowledge to read your dog and know how best to handle situations that may arise and how best to train to get the best results in training.

Some people will call or list a harder to train dog as not as intelligent, when in truth nothing could be further from the truth. (There to smart and getting bored with the training).

Knowing a breed helps in a lot of ways.
Also when you get a dog it is much better to get a breed that fits your life style.

It makes all the difference because you just cannot imagine how life-changing these wolfie-type dogs can be - and I would include GSDs in that description. Let me paint you a picture of life with Hal:-

Hal came home with us at 8 weeks. We wanted him to sleep in our kitchen. For 3 weeks we had to endure him howling all night long, crapping and peeing all over the kitchen with liquid diarrhoea. He virtually ripped his way through the kitchen door with his little claws. We tried everything to help him settle - nothing worked.

So I managed to persuade hubby to allow Hal to come into our bedroom. Result was total peace, no peeing, no crapping, a happy little wolf sleeping on the floor beside our bed. That was the first punch we had to roll with.

We very quickly learned he had to come everywhere with us - even into the loo! There is no way in a million years that we could both have gone out to work, even for 2 hours a day! That little man had to be with us 24 x 7. Which meant that the only entertainment we could allow ourselves was to go to a dog friendly pub. No foreign holidays, no going out to dinner, or dinner-parties, no parties, no clubs, no cinema, no theatre, no visiting friends unless they would allow the dog in their house - no leaving him in the car, he would destroy the interior and howl the place down.

Lovely garden soon rendered to a landscape similar to The Somme after the worst of the fighting in WW1! Deep holes appeared everywhere - in the lawns, in the flower beds - you took your life in your hands if you walked across the grass without looking at your feet!

He shed for the Olympics!! Our house resembled an American cowboy movie with tumbleweed blowing down the middle of the road!

Hal would eat any of my daughter's socks that he could get hold of - they would emerge the other end after about 3 week! He would lick the gussets of my and my daughter's knickers when they were on the floor in front of the washing machine. He would goose any female liberally with his cold wet nose whenever he met you - if you bent down in front of him to pick something up his nose would be straight up your bottom! He would sniff bicycle saddles, the cushions in pubs where people had sat, chairs, etc. etc. He was SO embarrassing!!

There is more - far, far more - but if you think that you really could cope with all this then go for it - but there are very, very few of us who are mad enough to go through the above!!

You could have 2 or more, living outside in kennels and runs, or in a back yard, but they need a huge amount of exercise so if you go out to work it would be very difficult to keep up with them.