You can adopt a West German Shepherd and make it a family pet if your life is active and you have a lot of time to spend with your pup and train it. Many experts do not recommend taking working-line dogs as family pets. Their main purpose is to guard; they can be aggressive to strangers or even your children running in front of it. The latter can happen if you do not properly train and socialize your dog. However, if your lifestyle is not too active, and you do not have much space in the backyard for your dog’s running and exercising, or if you spend much time at work, adopting a West working-line German Shepherd or a Western German Shepherd belonging to a showline is strongly not recommended. You can take a showline dog instead if you are ready to raise, exercise, and train it properly.