My 1-year GSD is too friendly, I want him to be a protection dog. What should I do?

This is a very common question. The answer is that at one year of age we want our dogs to be friendly. A one year old dog that is quick to bark at people probably has a bit of a temperament problem. I call dogs that are quick to bark - "sharp dogs." These are dogs whose nerves are a little thin. They bark in a defensive manner because they are nervous of something they are faced with. Most dogs that are quick to bark at one year are not barking out of strength but out of nervousness. A dog does not develop a strong defensive drive until it starts to mature which is around 18 months of age.

This does not mean that there is nothing that you can do before then. The young dogs need to learn the skills of biting. This is all done in prey drive. You can learn more about prey drive in my articles The Drives of Protection Training. You can also learn how to do this training through my training video called The First Steps of Bite Training. The majority of this early work can be done by the handler and in most cases this is fun for you and your dog.