Our 10-month old Rott is very friendly with people, he has excellent prey drive. I bought him for personal protection. Should I be concerned?

Question

I have watched some of your videos and am a regular visitor to your web site. I want to train my Rott into a personal protection dog. I am wondering if his temperament is good enough or am I just wasting my time. I realize it is impossible for you to be accurate without seeing him but I was wondering if you could give me some sense of his potential based on the following information.Thor is 10 months old. He has (what seems to me) a good prey drive. He is enthusiastic about playing with old or new prey items. I have a puppy sleeve and when it comes out of the closet he immediately goes for it. His bite is full mouth, but not what I would call real hard. He pulls and tugs with good force. I have used a back tie (like in your video) and swung a tug on a rope and he performs like the dogs in your video, really trying to get it. When he grabs it, I can pull the tug and lift his front legs off of the ground and he will still stay on. Some times he doesn't get a good grip or occasionally gnaws at it and loses they prey item. Usually he does well.I have read some books on protection dog training and tried some of the tests such as the opening umbrella, the hard stare, and he has been to the shooting range with me. I don't know if these are good tests or not, but he has done well at those also. He is very confident and not one bit afraid of strangers usually going right up to them. He is scared of the vacuum cleaner and barks at it.Since I am not experienced, I have only worked with him in prey drive. Today a friend, who is with our local police k-9, came over and worked with him in some defense drive. My friend made some crazy movements while I held him on a lead. Thor studied him for a few seconds and barked, at which time my friend ran away, acting scared. Thor seemed to really enjoy this game and later was barking louder and lunging at him, at which time I praised him.I apologize for the length of this e-mail but I wanted to give you as much detail as I could. What do you think? Is there any way of checking his temperament further? I sometimes wonder if he is too open towards strangers and so on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

    Scott

Accepted Answer

This sounds like a nice dog and you should not worry about anything at this point in time. It doesn't mean that he will be a great protection dog, but it does mean that there is nothing you should be concerned about.I would not be doing any other testing on a 10 month old dog. What your friend did was OK - but that's really all you want to do at this age. The dog is still a baby (kind of a baby HUEY), even though he is starting to look like an adult. He needs time to mature mentally before any serious defense work is done. This can vary from dog to dog. Some dogs can handle good defense at 13 - 14 months, some dogs can't handle it until 30 months and a lot of dogs can never handle it.I would not expect a dog to be aggressive to strangers at this age. If they were it would indicate a problem with the dogs nerves. If a dog has weak nerves, then it is not comfortable in strange places or with strangers. A 10 month old dog that acts aggressive to strangers is going to be a real problem dog as an adult. its going to be a "SHARP DOG," (read my article on the difference between sharp and hard).People become confused about personal protection dogs. They feel that they should always be very aggressive dogs. This is not the case. A good personal protection dog has good nerves. He learns to accept people but react to a given set of circumstances. This can be a command from the owner or an action from another person. The perfect example of this is my police dog. He is very very tough. He has bitten a number of bad guys while working - but he is very good with people. Strangers can come into our office, UPS delivery people can come in un-announced. He will simply go up and meet them. He is excellent with children. He is left in my offices at night - god forbid the fool that tries to break in - he has learned that he can kill anything he catches in the office at night :). This dog has been trained that there is a time to work and protect me or to make an apprehension when I send him after someone. He also knows that there is a time to live a normal happy life. His nerves are good and he enjoys both areas, he is actually a very happy fun dog.

    If people could get that one concept through their head they would have a much better chance of developing and training a good safe personal protection dog.