A Brief History
In the 1970s, Tina Barber was working and breeding American Showline German Shepherd Dogs and was frustrated with what she felt was poor hip health and changes to the accepted breed standard. She preferred the robust health and structure of the dogs from her youth in Germany, and felt that working line GSDs were "too much" for the average American family. She struck out to establish a line of GSDs that put all of the pieces together into one large, "old world" dog. This was the beginning of her Shiloh line of GSDs, and the foundation of what would eventually become the Shiloh Shepherd.
After two decades of breeding her line, Tina Barber felt that she was running out of options within the German Shepherd Dog breed. According to her, using popular and championed studs introduced genetic health conditions into her line, and proved to cause her desired temperament to be inconsistent. The beginning of the Shiloh Shepherd as it's own breed happened in 1991, when Tina Barber introduced Samson-Woo to her lines. Samson-Woo was a dog bred by Chuck Eisenmann, supposedly specifically for Tina, that was from his Hobo Line (dogs used as doubles for his reversed masked GSD, London of the Littlest Hobo television show). Samson-Woo was a mix of "American Show Dog" (Hobo line dogs), White Shepherd, and Malamute, and is behind every Shiloh Shepherd to date.
From there, Tina Barber introduced three new outcross studs: Artus, a black Altdeuscher Schaeferhunde in 1999, Orbit, a white German Shepherd in 2001, and a czechoslovakian wolfdog (a breed that's been renamed Vlcak) in 2005. She also brought back a female from her previous Shiloh line of GSDs in 2005. Along with Sabrina, a female who was supposedly around 10% Sarplaninac that predates the beginning of Shilohs as a breed, these dogs make up what is our present day ISSA Shiloh Shepherds and distinguishes them as a stand alone breed, both by type and by DNA sequencing.