This is a reprint of one of my older articles, I hope ya'll find it useful:

Personal Protection Dog Selection

Personal Protection Dog Kennel and Trainer Selection
• What titles do the trainers hold?
There are a few untitled trainers that do a good job, but these are *rare*. For trainers to be doing something as serious as training personal protection dogs and to not to have a lot of titles in different venues ( titles just in *one* venue is a warning sign ) is a big warning sign.

• Do they have a ready made list ( and please, take the time to call former clients) of people that have gotten dogs from them. Evaluate closely those dogs - are they still functioning as PPD’s, or did they end up pets because the clients weren’t serious and no longer trained them ?
And along those lines, what does the PPD train offer for follow up sessions ( hint: free life-time follow should be the norm ), or if the client lives too far to come for follow up, does the trainer help arrange contact between the client and say, their local Schutzhund club?

• Does the trainer proudly point to some “Master Trainer” certificate hanging on their wall? ( Valuable hint here ) - if the certificate is from anywhere else but The Tom Rose School For Dogs or Triple Crown Academy…………walk away, they’re bogus.

• Does the PPD trainer have pictures of all the celebrities that they’ve sold dogs to plastered all over their office wall or website? Hint - Celebrities are usually the worse PPD clients, their staff ends up taking care of the dog and it’s a total waste of a good dog. So Celebrity endorsements are a strong sign of a bogus set-up and a reason to shop elsewhere.

• Now to more important matters - does the PPD trainer actually know what happens during a criminal attack? This should elementary, but most PPD trainers have never actually been a crime victim and/or even more rarely, have ever deployed a dog to deter an attack.
And if you’ve never done something in real life, you’re working on assumptions that you’ve learned from others, no matter how hard you train.
This gives trainers that were K9 officers a real advantage in the PPD world, even though the deployment of a canine by an LEO has a very different rule set then what a civilian using his PPD will encounter.
I also give a nod to ex-Military folks that have seen actual combat, it gives them a mindset that is valuable in the training of PPD’s ( and not just Military dog handlers, the basic combat grunt has gained the lessons of staying alive against hostile forces to a degree that civilians can never obtain ).
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The Fetz dog:
http://www.leerburg.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/79673/page/25