As someone who speaks German, it feels puzzling to me why I would teach my dog German commands (even though I have a GSD), these are just the regular words/phrases for things but in a different language.

Humorous or not, there was a video of a dog trainer that trained his (you guess it: German Shepherd) in German commands, partly so that when he worked with client's dogs, he could use English, and his German-speaking dog who would be in close proximity (useful for reactive training) wouldn't compete with the client's dog.

Used in Schutzhund, German dog sport/training: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzhund

I grew up speaking German and still use "zu!" with my (otherwise English-trained) dogs for "get out of the way!".

Haha nice one. As a kid I had these friends in the neighborhood (Netherlands) whose dad trained Malinois shepherds and sold them worldwide to security services and police units.

In my city are four day marches in the summer where also international military participate. Before dawn, all these soldiers walk from the forest - where they sleep - to the starting point. It was customary for us as kids to wave to the soldiers and wish them good luck and ask for some souvenirs/stickers.

One day my friends had their dog with them and we learned the command 'luid' (loud in English, laut im Deutsch) so the dog would bark. Early in the morning, exhausted soldiers that did not even had their morning coffee, very quiet outside, and then the dog would bark them to shock with our little whispers of 'luid'. Good times.

Platz. That’s the one German command I give to my shepherd.

I trained her over 11 years ago using Michael Ellis videos and picked it up there. If she was younger I’d incorporate some more of these.

"Sitz" and "platz" sound too similar, so to make it easier, some german people I know use a mixture of german and english.

"Sitz!" for sit

"Down!" for down.

Do they have other languages? My dog is an immigrant and it would be nice to use his native language.

The list goes to 48 (!), in case you’re fooled by the self-promo and “PS” after number 20.

> 2. Drop it / Let go — Aus. In German, aus is a preposition meaning “out of.”

It also means "off" and – in sports – "offside", which I think is much closer to what "aus" means in this context.

The most important one is missing:

Fass!

You better know what it means when a dog owner points at you and says "Fass!".

There is a hilarious episode by German comedian Gerhard Polt about this word where he plays the owner of a Kampfhund (the genuine grandson of the great-uncle of the dog of Adolf Hitler) who goofs around alternating between "Fass!" and "Nicht Fass!" not realizing that the dog is not capable of distinguishing between the two.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=I5sFagE-zqw

(In German, obviously - the Bavarian kind)

These would be fun for voice control in a video game.

Which would be called Castle Woofenstein.

I've never seen a GSD actually obey the drop/aus command without you having something to trade for

TIL: Phooey is actually a german word, Pfui.

I have an ultra-trained GSD, and I find German commands cringe and pretentious.