The figures I can easily find show 4.4 million pit bulls alive in the US as of 6/2018.
For German Shepherds I found 3.5 million in the US, but that’s registered dogs.
https://mygermanshepherd.org/global-gsd-population-how-many-gsds-are-there-in-the-world/
Anecdotally, in our more-or-less typical Midwestern USA region, I certainly run across at least as many PB as GS. But maybe there are lots of GS service dogs I would not see?
A lot more PB seem to be coming out of questionable situations / ownership. (1st article)
OT: I saw an absolutely huge GS recently at a local farm & feed supply store. It had to be 50% bigger than any other large / adult GS I’ve seen. (I’m over 60.) Is there a line being bred for exceptional size?
First off, I was just looking at that very site, but a different page specifically about populations.
Second, 24/7 claims it is THEIR survey of classified ads. I still don’t quite get how they come up with millions as if they had time to count up all the class ads in the country.
While it is true that registrations are not the end all beall either, because most do not have registered dogs (AND that is just for the year...does not represent how many registered dogs are living, mostly just puppies) it is likewise logical that about the same % of owners register their dogs across all the breeds. Therefore, there simply is likely so many more times of each of those registrations, and Labs are still likely the most popular across even unregistered dogs.
Last, they classify pit bulls as they should, a type of dog, but they also include dogs who are innocuous these days. French Bulldogs, Boston Terriers and Bulldogs are not the same nasty type they came from.
Either way, you can inflate the numbers all you want, but it will never come close to the 67% of fatalities that PBT types seem to be committing. The best they came up with was about 9% of the dog pop.
Some people just plain want bigger dogs, and many CLAIM their dog is 120 lbs but not. But yes, there ARE Shiloh and King Shepherds that were specifically bred to be oversized, tend to be long-haired, and are often claimed to be mixed with Malamute to help the size. They certainly tend to be square built and straight legged like Mals.
A good German Shepherd should be anywhere from 60-90 lbs. really should not exceed a slender weight of 100. My sis had nice dogs that WERE genuinely about 110 lbs. Too big, but at least they were proportionate and were not fat.