I was very close to getting a Swissy! When my dog died in 99, I was going to wait and put deposits down on a male and a female pup from a breeder near Columbus (Cant remember the name right now). We lasted a whole two weeks before a friend told us about his ex girlfriend having 13 pups to adopt out, and the next day, we had two of them. We kind of hit the jackpot on one of them, the male, King( picture a small (60 pound) black and white doberman), is one smart dog, not in a trainable sort of way, he seems to be an "Evil Genius" (the puppy training place called him that), who doesn't really care about food, or toys, he wants to interact with other dogs and/or people and play with them, very very roughly. He's been the heathiest dog I have hever had, by far, at least to age 5 and a half. Molly, the female, is a grey (faded black) and white dog, very pretty in the face, with some so far untreatable skin problems. She also lost in the hip lottery too, King's are both OFA good, her's are poor. So far, they havent bothered her at all, so who knows?
Getting back to GSMD's, a neighbor had one, Bob, about 20 years ago. My Lab and him were big buddies until Bob suddenly died one day, at age 8. I wanted one from then on, but I seem to have good luck with mutts, so..