Protective instinct... when ?

[RedyreRottweilers]

With puppies, when they begin to demonstrate some defensive behavior such as barking/growling at strangers, etc, I start to control it immediately.

I encourage when the response is warranted. I pet, praise, and use the key word I use to alert the dog. After a few seconds, I interrupt the dog, discourage the behavior, and distract the dog, using my command of "that will do" which means stop what you are doing right now.

If the response is NOT warranted, I do the interrupt, discourage, distract procedure, also with "that will do".

This helps me to end up with a dog who understands an alert and a cease command.

 

[JR0579]

Great advice and thoughts especially about controlling the behavior. Thank you all so much.

 

[DanL]

Rob, I think the growling and barking your 8 month old is doing is normal, but it's more of an alert response rather than real protection. I can almost guarantee you that if a person made an aggressive move towards her and make a lot of noise she'd run away, not run towards the threat and engage it. I did that to my GSD when he was 9 months. I snuck in the yard at night, when I knew he was by the back door, and I clanked some bowls together and hunched down with my sweatshirt hood over my head. He came running, and when he saw me, stopped about 40' away and began barking and growling, hackles up, and soundling like he meant business. Definitely something that would be disconcerting to the average person. I jumped up real fast and took a couple steps towards him, and he ran away to the porch, still barking and growling. If he was actually being protective, he would have engaged me, not run away. Dogs that age are too young for real protection. While they are great at alerting you, and great at being a deterrent to someone who might not know what that big dog's reaction will be, they do not have the maturity to physically protect. That is why dogs like the GSD are not doing full on protection work where they have to be truely defensive until they are fully mature. Parts of it can be trained, but if the defensive drive isn't there, where the dog will engage a threat rather than retreat, then the true protection ability is not there either.

 

[Doberluv]

My last GSD was as friendly to strangers as my Labrador was and that was very, very friendly. He never barked at delivery people or workman. He hardly barked at all. He was not reserved as they should be according to their description. But when he was older, my kids were alone in the house and someone tried to jimmy the door late at night. (kids were teenagers) The dog was in one of the kid's rooms with them and he ran down the stairs to the entry by the front door. He was VICIOUS...teeth gnashing, absolutely going balistic. The poor kids were scared, but whomever or whatever it was went away. The almost identical thing happened with our Lab. She never barked either much until something really did almost happen.

My Doberman developed the growling/vicious bark when inside at something outside at about 4.5 months of age. He has had to learn to temper it down a bit and settle when I tell him. But I will look out the window first and tell him if I think everything is cool. I don't scold him for barking, but do insist that he settles when all is clear. He is very discerning about what is a threat or not when he can see the person...like when I open the door and speak to someone, even a perfect stranger, he just watches, doesn't bark, once I open the door. He watches the person and then me. He assesses my mood and the person's, I think. He's perfectly safe around people, a little reserved at first, but comes around to being friendly in short order. Like when I have someone come in to fix something. He's just fine and in fact starts playing with them...giving kisses, stealing tools etc.

So, in short, be glad your dog is friendly and not a liability. Just because he doesn't bark doesn't mean he's not protective. It probably means that he knows there is no threat. They're smarter at assessing and discerning a threat than we sometimes give them credit for.