Would your dog protect you?

[HoundedByHounds]

Friend of mine on the Akita lists owns a very nice bitch...Therapy dog. She came home one day to a blood spattered living room...someone had broken in an her bitch had taken them on, she took several knife wounds including one that laid her face open right across her mouth...the others on her chest and shoulders. This dog did not cower or run away...she protected her home and the items in it...had her owner been there you think she magically would have become afraid?

My friend is a vet and she sewed her own dog up that night and the police found copious human samples among the blood in her home...in several rooms. They did not ever find the person responsible.

this dog was not trained...to agress to people, ever. She was a therapy dog that spent her days visiting old folks and kids.

My own Geisha...who I lost to auto immune...almost went over the side of an ex pen at 5 months old to get my aunt's friend because he playfully pushed her, we were staying with my aunt and she was very bonded to her. The man was very frirghtened by that...and the "puppy" was serious..do not lay hands on my person. Not a GREAT thing in a small puppy...but again...protection...EVERY instinct in a dog should be properly controlled and channeled...and that comes thru training and proper placement at the beginning.

I almost thinks it a sex-linked thing because men often are the most vocal about "that dog woudln't protect you", up to and including making feints and and egging on, dogs.

I have to wonder if they aren't somehow threatened by another creature being perhaps...stronger than they themselves could be in a situation.

 

[shadowfacedanes]

A dog that shows signs of fear- baring of teeth, growling, hackles up- can be intimidating to someone who doesn't know how to read that language. That is NOT protection! A dog acting that way can be made to run and it'll shut down. You can permanently ruin a dog by forcing it to run off the field like that. Once it's been beaten in a fight, few dogs will want to fight again.

Sure, that may be signs of fear in SOME dogs, but I wouldn't go so far as to blanket all dogs with that statement.

There is a complete difference in a dog who is showing fear signs (tail between legs, standing behind owner) barking and showing teeth than a dog who is completely and utterly confident it can hand you your ass barking and showing teeth.

JMO, having seen both...

As I said, I have been in a real life situation where Hannah protected/defended me by stopping the person who was trying to assault me. She gave warning, and when the warning wasn't heeded, she acted. Not one ounce of fear in her. She was very calm and deliberate throughout the act, actually. She had the chance to run if she wanted, she didn't. She had the chance to take a cheap shot and then get behind me, she didn't.

 

[Sunnierhawk0]

I know that if push came to shove, Spider would protect me. She has already shown that she would.And I can assure you, its not from "fear" this dog has never found anything she was scared of or that made her back down. She has one of the most stable temps in a Rottie I have seen in a LONG time. Kodak would be packing her bags and hauling her butt off to the next state lol

 

[DanL]

lol @ folks who don't know my dog summing up her personality...teehee. I know what I saw...and I am no novice when it comes to dog behavior. Cleo at 5-6 months old is not a Lab or a Shepherd at 5-6 mos old...she is herself...and she has not changed since she got here. In spite of her goofy pictures she is and always has been a mature dog in mind and spirit. An old soul.

Akita pups at 5-6 mos are more than capable of protecting their owners or property, and several I know, have. They are again...old souls.

Let's not assume all breeds are "like GSD's"...because nope...they aren't.

I presume you are talking about me. I stand corrected that an Akita is an exceptional dog that can protect it's property and family at a young age. I bet your 6 month old girl can protect better than a 3 year old herding breed.

However, since Akitas are known to be dog aggressive, I still think that what your dog displayed with that other dog wasn't protection, but dog aggressiveness.

The reason people use the GSD as a benchmark for comparing protection dogs is because, like it or not, they are the standard in that area.

 

[HoundedByHounds]

No no CLEO is the one who stepped in front of my son. Leonberger's have been bred to be all around farm dogs, and above all...to protect the children in their charge (their nick in Germany is "Nanny Dog" after all. They are very very well known for their abilities in the arena of kiddo relations.

I no longer have Akitas because of the dog aggression and the fact that they tend to protect their kids...from other kids LOL.

lmbo at Cleo being dog aggro...BTW.

 

[DanL]

I almost thinks it a sex-linked thing because men often are the most vocal about "that dog woudln't protect you", up to and including making feints and and egging on, dogs.

And women are the ones who think that because Fluffy barked and growled at the stranger, she'd protect to the death.

 

[DanL]

No no CLEO is the one who stepped in front of my son. Leonberger's have been bred to be all around farm dogs, and above all...to protect the children in their charge (their nick in Germany is "Nanny Dog" after all. They are very very well known for their abilities in the arena of kiddo relations.

I no longer have Akitas because of the dog aggression and the fact that they tend to protect their kids...from other kids LOL.

lmbo at Cleo being dog aggro...BTW.

Ah. I didn't know who was who. My bad.

 

[HoundedByHounds]

as I stated...death isn't necessary...LOL. Stats would likely...back this up. Dogs in a NEIGHBORHOOD bring down crime.

Again men get hung up on "yeah but if I hit the dog with this...or wait..this is bigger...THIS" it'd run away. Nevermind the actuality of the fact that police use dogs...because dogs frighten people when they bark. I've seen it many times...they only have to THREATEN to release a dog and the person lays on the ground.

Dog frighten people, when they bark...that IS protection. Folks want to analyze the heck out of it and minimize it...but regardless of what you may think about the why...the end result is what keeps people safe.

I feel safer with Cleo than I would with any police dog...because she is bonded to this FAMILY, this HOUSE, and these KIDS, not just a dog trained by some guy who does it for a living then shipped of to be used as a tool by perhaps, multiple folks. There is nothing wrong with that...but at some point I think folks involved in protection as sport or trade...forget that the whole reason dogs are with people AT ALL is because even in their basest untrained state...their instincts to protect pack and territory...make them effective deterrents to interlopers.

 

[DanL]

Well if the definition of protection is to deter, I agree, but a barking dog isn't a protection dog, it's a watch dog. Our pug does that because he barks and it's a well known fact that criminals will usually not bother with a house where a dog is barking. Barking brings unwanted attention. Is Bruzer protecting me? Heck no. He's warning me that something is out there. Does that make him a better dog than the aforementioned Akita who bit someone up who came into the house? Maybe the Akita didn't bark, since they are not big barkers, and therefore didn't deter the intruder from coming in. What would you rather have, someone deterred by barking, or what happened in that instance?

The difference between a trained protection dog and a family pet who has protective instincts is that the trained dog has been groomed to deal with all kinds of adversity. A well trained protection dog isn't going to come off the bite no matter what the bad guy does. He's going to take being hit, kicked, thrown around because his desire to fight and win outweighs his desire to run away. The trained dog isn't mauling the intruder with multiple bites. It's one bite, and it doesn't let go until told to. If someone comes into your house with the intent of harming you, he's not going to be nice to your dog. If your dog comes after him, he's going to do whatever it takes to neutralize your dog. Will your dog continue to go after the intruder if he picks up a chair and hits it? A bat? A big stick? This is where I'm coming from with these posts. Most dogs will not protect if the person they are up against is taking the fight to them. They will run. Call it minimizing, but to me, it's the true definition of the word.

Yes, a police dog barking is intimidating to the average person. But to a drug crazed person with a weapon, the dog means nothing, and you need a dog that is willing to engage such a person without any chance of the dog taking the flight response.

I don't know how it is where you live, but here, police dogs are raised by their breeders up to a certain age, usually 18 months (why? so their defensive drive is fully developed). When an agency purchases them, they are assigned to a handler who trains the dog to the requirements of the department, be it dual purpose patrol and bomb or drug detection, or single purpose patrol, bomb, or drug only. That handler remains with that dog, usually for the entire career of the dog. Most even keep the dog after it retires because the dog has bonded to them and their family. They are not passed around from person to person on a regular basis. The officer doesn't go into work, sign out a patrol car and then go to the kennel to get whatever dog is available that night.

 

[milos_mommy]

At 17 pounds....Would he protect me and would he try are two different things.

 

[planet molosser]

I dont think people can make blanketed statements regarding all dogs behavior unless they themselves have worked or tested most dog breeds.

My dog breed does not hackle but they do growl a growl worse than most breeds since it comes from the gut- It may be a 1 second growl or a few seconds.

They growl to warn and thank god for that growl it has allowed me to stop them from reacting...

After the bad guy does not listen to the growl they will go fwd in a defense posture and tooth butt if given time or bite if not.
They do not stay on sleeve and use thier bodies to body check, their growling is enough to make most crap in their pants.. Plus the size factor.

Young dogs will hackle or bark and later as they get older and mature and pressure is applied they lesson that. But they most learn first not to bite vs vice versa.

So they at time will bark to let the bad guys know they are there.
That is how they protect the property later if the stranger who normally walks by comes for the gate the barking goes to intense growling and later SILENCE and . Silence is when u now the attack is coming.

So please not lump all dog breeds together on general references on how they do this or that. We have some younguns here who take things literally.

 

[planet molosser]

Ok their is a line between trained protection dogs that stay on the bite and family pets. I I have none of those and yet my dogs do protect.

And they DONT maul because they come off the bite as a matter of fact they come off the first bite to give the person a chance or the dog a chance to get OUT of their area.
Which can save you allot of aggravation.

If someone was stupid enough to jump my back fence cause they did NOT see the dogs. And the dog knock them down and they got one warning bite I could a get there of b they could jump back over. SOme dogs are just territorial vs prey driven.

When my dogs do sleeve man work they SPIT the sleeve out and redirect on the person wanting to use thier bodies as wrestlers. This in my opinion makes it easier for the bad guy NOT to shoot the dog in the head since he is staying on his arm .

The dog can be in constant motion making not a easy target.
And given us owners a chance in most cases to stop the intruder from being hurt.
Truth is most intruders are just idiots in wrong place wrong time resulting in lawsuits.

I am all for taking breeds bred for PP to high levels of PP training.
But not all breeds are created for or bred for trials or repetive training when they were created long before PP work or the GSD was ever heard of

 

[minpinluvrs]

My wife was afraid at one point that our Rottie, who was always a sweet, friendly dog, (they say meet 90 people in the first 90 days, we made a point of taking him everywhere in Philly that dogs were permitted, so he met 1500 people, at least, in his first 90 days,) had no protection instinct at all. We live in a very rural area, and if the mail man or UPS man showed up, he'd be all over them, just giving them love.

One night, I was at the neighbor's house late, and she had decided to go to bed. This was before we had our Min Pins, and the Rottie never barked, if he heard something outside, he'd go to the door and perk up his ears, but that was it.

Anyway, that night, she left a note on the door telling me to come into the house as quietly as I could, and not turn any lights on, just to see what Thor would do. Stupidly, I did as she asked, went in the house, snuck back to the bedroom, and as I quietly turned the doorknob, I barely had time to hear a growl before his feet were on my shoulders and I was pushed against the hallway wall. Thank God he knew my voice when I called his name and told him to stop, or I think I would have been hurt that night...lol.

The only other time he's EVER shown any aggression was when the UPS man showed up when only my wife was home, and he wouldn't let the UPS guy come near him or her. Normally they only show up when I'm home, and in that case, they're his best friend, he see's the brown uniform and that means "play time."

Goes to show, it all depends on who they feel they're protecting. I don't know if he'd protect me like he does her, but all that matters to me is that he's protective of her. If she does take him to the city on a leash, he's once again the friendliest dog on earth and doesn't seem to have any protection instinct at all, but that would probably change if he felt something wasn't right about a situation.

As far as the Min Pins, NOBODY is allowed on our property until we repeatedly tell them it's alright, but once again, they're great in public.

 

[Squishy22]

Hell is going to freeze over today. I actually agree with Labra!

First- reaction to another dog isn't protection, it's dogs being dogs. Especially when it's a 6 month old puppy. It was responding to signals being given off by the other dog and reacting in kind- aggressiveness meeting aggressiveness.

A dog that is 5-6 months old does not have the mental maturity to do ANY kind of protection. Can a puppy be training in protection? Sure. We have several pups and young dogs at the protection clubs I belong to. They are trained in prey drive where there is no pressure on the dog, it's all a game that the pup wins every time. If you put defensive pressure on a puppy like that, it will most likely shut down. I don't care what breed it is. True defensive drive does not fully kick in on a dog until it is mature. Some dogs that can be 3 years. It's usually at least 18 months and more commonly 2 years or so. A dog without fully developed defensive drive can't protect.

Likewise, a Boston Terrier doing bite work is being worked in prey. He's given a win/win situation. Most of Schutzhund is prey based. Even the "courage test" isn't that much defense on the dogs part. There are a ton of Schutzhund trained dogs who won't do real life protection.

With a couple exceptions on some of the dogs here, I bet anyone who can read a dog's body language could run off any dog in this topic who's said to be protective. It might get physical- once you start pounding on a dog, few will stick around, but that's what happens in a real fight. A dog that shows signs of fear- baring of teeth, growling, hackles up- can be intimidating to someone who doesn't know how to read that language. That is NOT protection! A dog acting that way can be made to run and it'll shut down. You can permanently ruin a dog by forcing it to run off the field like that. Once it's been beaten in a fight, few dogs will want to fight again.

And I agree with this 100%

Its funny how so many people on this pit bull forum I visit claim that their 4 month old puppy is a true guard dog. Seriously...

 

[DanL]

When my dogs do sleeve man work they SPIT the sleeve out and redirect on the person wanting to use thier bodies as wrestlers. This in my opinion makes it easier for the bad guy NOT to shoot the dog in the head since he is staying on his arm .

Thats what a PP dog is supposed to do. Say your dog bites someone and he slips off his coat. Do you want the dog thrashing around on the coat like he just won a prize, while the intruder proceeds to harm you, or do you want the dog redirecting back to the intruder? Dogs that have too much focus on the equipment are thinking of it as a game and not as a job. Those kind of dogs have to have more civil agitation done to get them less focused on the gear and more focused on the man. As far as a weapon goes, most dogs will go for the closest appendage or the one with the most motion. A bad guy might come at the dog with a gun in his hand, that hand is the one that the dog will grab. Once the dog is crushing down on the wrist, that gun is falling to the ground. You can also train targeting to teach the dog to go for the weapon hand.

 

[planet molosser]

Dan I agree with most of what u say. However My dogs are not built for speed compared to a Mal or a GSD. IM quite sure the trigger finger will be faster than my fastest dog.
In Practice the dogs get the gun hand, some hesitate to kill a PO Dog cause it carries jail tiime. But to kill one of my dogs im quite sure they would.

However I have a pack of 1 dog to multi dogs in several areas they would have to have a machine gun to get them all..

 

[DanL]

However I have a pack of 1 dog to multi dogs in several areas they would have to have a machine gun to get them all..

:rofl1: I'd never want to be up against multiple dogs of your breed!

 

[a.baker]

lol Yup my puppy hides behind me to protect him. But hes still a baby. So after he grows and matures we will see.

 

[planet molosser]

Dan I also agree with most of you post about pups I wont sell my dogs to a home that do not have a present LGD mentor. Or at all if protection from human predators are needed ASAP. I tell them to buy a trained PP dog..

Pups need to grow up.
However I do assess some pups as early as 7 weeks as too high ADR for average homes. And they are sold to homes who want serious protection and will mature into a dog that will bite vs display as early as 8 month and weighing 100 pounds.
Most Molossers take 2=3 years to mature from pup to teenager to adult.
Some take that long to come into full protection which is great gives u a chance to socialize the dog fully before they are ready to do what comes natural.

However some breeds of dogs exist before modern man and they needed to be serious as soon as they could to survive in the wild. These breeds survived thru natural selection and the young ones that I assess at higher ADR would of survived and the slow maturing ones would of perished. Which is why I keep the toughest females to retain natural working abilities vs choosing easy dogs for modern man's idea of what dogs should act or be like.

 

[ACooper]

Dogs are not one dimensional, but they will always put their own needs first. If they react at someone, they are reacting not because their owner is at the end of the leash, but because they feel scared, nervous, anxious...whatever. The owner doesn't even come into the picture.

I couldn't disagree with this statement MORE. I have had MANY dogs who acted in MY best interest or to address MY needs without being asked.

As a teen I lived in AZ and would climb the mountains behind our home. Our family dog would always go with............that dog would get in front of me and wait for me to hold his tail to help me climb. YES, that was his needs I never trained, asked, or expected him to do so, he just LIKED helping and seeing to my needs. That was just one example btw.

Dogs put our needs ahead of their own on many occasions..........you don't think detecting a threat and "worrying" about us would be included in that? Right

The dog may bite, but it would be protecting itself from the threat, not its owner.

Again, disagree. My dogs (in the past) have grabbed the ankle and held people that they LIKED because they felt I was being threatened. People that they normally lick and accept food from. The dogs were not even in the vicinity when trouble began...........so what you are saying is that my dogs RAN into the troubled area and then felt they were in danger and had to defned THEMSELVES, okie dokie

Oh, and these were garden variety mutts just so you know.

Hell is going to freeze over today. I actually agree with Labra!

First- reaction to another dog isn't protection, it's dogs being dogs. Especially when it's a 6 month old puppy. It was responding to signals being given off by the other dog and reacting in kind- aggressiveness meeting aggressiveness.

A dog that is 5-6 months old does not have the mental maturity to do ANY kind of protection. Can a puppy be training in protection? Sure. We have several pups and young dogs at the protection clubs I belong to. They are trained in prey drive where there is no pressure on the dog, it's all a game that the pup wins every time. If you put defensive pressure on a puppy like that, it will most likely shut down. I don't care what breed it is. True defensive drive does not fully kick in on a dog until it is mature. Some dogs that can be 3 years. It's usually at least 18 months and more commonly 2 years or so. A dog without fully developed defensive drive can't protect.

Likewise, a Boston Terrier doing bite work is being worked in prey. He's given a win/win situation. Most of Schutzhund is prey based. Even the "courage test" isn't that much defense on the dogs part. There are a ton of Schutzhund trained dogs who won't do real life protection.

With a couple exceptions on some of the dogs here, I bet anyone who can read a dog's body language could run off any dog in this topic who's said to be protective. It might get physical- once you start pounding on a dog, few will stick around, but that's what happens in a real fight. A dog that shows signs of fear- baring of teeth, growling, hackles up- can be intimidating to someone who doesn't know how to read that language. That is NOT protection! A dog acting that way can be made to run and it'll shut down. You can permanently ruin a dog by forcing it to run off the field like that. Once it's been beaten in a fight, few dogs will want to fight again.

Dan, I agree with some of your statement and don't have experience in other parts to agree or disagree. The part in BOLD is where I disagree.

We had a blue dobe when I was a teen. One day my dad came outside yelling at us for goofing off when we were supposed to be doing work. At the time that dobe was around 6-7 months old.

He heard my dad yelling at us (it was YELLING) and came flying to see what the issue was. Now understand that the dog in question liked my dad, he played with him and lived with him so he KNEW my dad..........but his heart belonged to us kids. He did NOT take kindly to him yelling at us. He ran over and grabbed his leg, he did NOT bite a hole in him or anything.........he just grabbed his calf and looked right up into his eyes.

Consider it his way of asking my dad to chillax, LOL, so I really disagree with the "mentality" part of your comment. Yes a pup HAS the understanding to protect if he wants to, he may not always have the physical maturity to back himself tho. Just my opinion.