Short ribs are about 6 inches and mostly cartilage, easy to chew up bone. Full ribs are between 8 and 12 inches. One of my 45 lb Border Collies can’t eat even half of the thing. The other 45 lb Border Collie eats about 3/4 of it. A German Shepherd should get a good chew out of it, but have no problem eating the whole thing. My old 85 lb GSD chewed them up pretty well, but he wasn’t inclined to gulp and the ribs were big enough that I wouldn’t have considered it a problem. If he is a really voracious chewer then you can have the butcher cut up a rack of ribs so that they are in groups of 2. That’s what I do with pork ribs.
