Hey folks, I am a new user and I am seeking advice from someone with more wisdom than myself.

My wife and I for various reasons decided recently to try and acquire a PPD to become part of our household.

We have two adult male labs, cats, various other critters, and three young boys.

We found over the net a "trainer" who convinced us it is possible through him to purchase a highly trained dog with pretty much push button obedience, that would integrate well into our household. I spoke to two references who were very happy with dogs from the same guy. We went to his facility, where my wife as the primary handler underwent several days of orientation with this dog, an 18 month old female GSD. Her obedience seemed pretty ok at the trainers facility, but we were assured that it would take time for the dog to accept our leadership, and sort of adopt our family as her pack.

When we got home, the dog's obedience pretty much disappeared.We expected to need to work with the dog, but she didn't even resemble the behavior we were expecting. She wanted to eat our cats and chickens, and jumped on a horse when we foolishly let her off the leash. As for any indication that she might provide a level of protection, lets just say I'm pretty sure my welcoming committee labs are a bigger threat to any would be intruder.

After several weeks of frustration the trainer has readily accepted the return of the dog for either replacement or further training. So I am left with the following questions: Is it possible and practical to purchase a dog that is already trained and expect it to perform for us as it did for the trainer, provide a level of protection for our household, and integrate easily into our home?

Can anyone recommend a trainer that can provide such a dog? If so what should one reasonably expect to pay? Would we be better off to purchase a puppy with appropriate breeding, and raise/train it in our household?

Edited by Connie Sutherland (03/05/2009 10:29 AM)
Edit reason: paragraphing

In a word, no.

You need to make a decision - do you really need or want a true PPD, and if so, are you willing to make the *many* changes to your life style to be able to successfully manage the canine?

If your answer is no to anyone of those questions, then a PPD is wrong for you.
And by reading what you wrote about your home set-up with multiple other animals, children, etc., - you're a set-up for failure with a real PPD ( please don't take that the wrong way, please, it's just my professional opinion and no insult is meant by that, I'm just giving you the benefit of my experience ).

As some simple advice, you could spend some time reading the many past threads in the "Protection Training" area of the forums here or at the Protection Dog Forum ( which isn't very active, but it's easy to read the solid advice written there about purchasing or owning a PPD )
http://www.protectiondogforums.com/
Knowledge is power, and learning all that you can before making this type of decision will save you both money and possible heartache.

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate your points and am not offended. We are willing to adapt our life style to the presence of a PPD. We are very serious and meticulous about the management of all our animals, and I don't have any illusions about this being a serious commitment.

I guess my real question is to what degree should I expect the training from the professional to immediately convey to the new surroundings, handlers, etc. I know that training is going to be an effort for the life time of the dog, but to what degree should we expect to have to sort of retrain in the new circumstances.

The person we've dealt with recently, implied this should all be push button which I now think to be crap. Again, if anyone could recommend sources/trainers we should consider, it would be most appreciated.

I Have been asked by multiple people yesterday via PM to post about the purchase phase of getting a PPD, and more importantly, how to avoid getting ripped-off, so here goes with the various questions that were asked:

A) Can a sports trained dog protect me?

The answer to that is - it depends.

Most criminals are looking for victims, not sparring partners, and the threat of a dog barking ( or a firearm ) will almost always make them seek easier prey.
So just a dog barking is a deterrent, and even a pet can fulfill this need ( a good sport dog may indeed bite an intruder, but you'll never be sure, and if you need a set level of security you are going to have to train that dog further, or get a different dog.

The real question arises when you are dealing with a determined attacker - then all bets are off. Most dogs can be driven off by a determined attacker and in that case you need one of the rare dogs with the willingness to engage and fight - and this will give you enough time to escape, call for help, or get to your firearms and deal with the problem in a more serious manner.

Most of the so called "ppds" sold by so many of these amateur trainers would not do their job in a real fight, but they can bark at an intruder.....the only downside here is...why pay 10k for a dog that won't do the work?
If clients would only test these so called "ppds" correctly, these bogus kennels and trainers would dry up and stop scamming folks.

B) Can I start with a puppy and train it?

You can.....but their are mostly disadvantages to taking that path, if you're looking for a real PPD.

All puppies are a crap shoot, no matter how well you do a temperament evaluation, the puppy may mature into a dog that just doesn't have what it takes to be an effective PPD.
Plus, you have hips and the such to worry about, I've scrapped out many a promising pup due to health issues that only surfaced as the dog matures.

I always told most clients to concentrate on an 18 to 24 month old dog with no training issues - do a hard evalaution at that time and if the dog passes, it's worth putting the time and money into training it as a PPD ( you might notice from my standpoint that a PPD candidate is *not* a sport or Police Canine washout - you see that waaaay too often with many vendors, and that's just wrong. )

Question...how will my PPD be in the house?

I always answer this question by saying - if you are in *real* danger and are looking for a PPD, you want a dog that first and foremost will *stop* the bad guy, and everything else is a secondary consideration.
I usually only see this type of urgency with "overseas" sales, i.e., the dogs are going to a 2nd or even 3rd world location where they have a serious job to do. I have sold a few of these type dogs in the U.S. ( and own one myself ) but they usually go to the un-named Government agencies.

Most Americans do not want ( nor are they willing to modify their life style to own ) a real PPD. They want a dog that will alarm bark and possibly ( but no real guarantee ) bite the bad guy, but when you get right down to it, they will trade livability for protection - I see it all the time.

A common thing that a vendor sees is a woman that is being stalked and is in a panic and makes a bad decision to buy a PPD - they end up with too much dog and when the situation calms down they want to get rid of the dog, ASAP.

I actually had a potential client ( back when I was a vendor ) that was considering a dog from me, but they ended up buying a dog from someone that I had previously had a good opinion of. Well, naturally the woman changed her mind and wanted to give the dog back to the trainer that she had bought it from - who now would not even return the woman's phone calls ( he's off my list of recommended vendors, needless to say ).
For some reason the woman called me then for advice ( and I wondered to myself..."why call me? You didn't even buy *my* dog!" ) and the only thing I could tell her was to try and sell the dog. I never did end up hearing what happened in the end, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty.
Sadly, that's a far more common occurrence that you'd think.

So I would tell anybody that was thinking of getting a PPD to stop and think *hard* about what adding a defensive dog will do to your lifestyle, and to make damn sure that you are willing to make the life style accommodations to suit getting a PPD.
Or be happy with the decision to get a lesser dog and feel good about it - even a bark alert increases your personal security, just don't play that common game of fooling yourself that the dog will stop the bad guy at the dog - it most likely wont.

Here's a question that I always asked my clients that were looking for a PPD - do you own a gun? If they said no, they didn't need a dog from me and that ended the potential sale. It's all about life style changes and the willingness to make them.

Now, how to go about selecting a dog and kennel to get a real PPD:

Here's what I would look for in determining if I would get a dog from a PPD trainer/ kennel:

1) 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 PPD's 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.

2) 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 SchH club?

3) 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.

4) 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.

5) 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 mind set 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 ).


Think about all this, I'll be adding part II which will concentrate on evaluating the dog a vendor presents to you.

Ok, you've followed the advice from the previous"Selecting a Trainer/Vendor" and after doing your extensive homework, you've gotten in contact with a good vendor. You have been in close communication with this vendor via e-mail and phone and he thinks that he's got a dog that you can work with.
What now?

There are a few steps that I suggest you take to make the most out of your visit to see the dog.

1) Come a little bit early to the site and ask to be shown around *before* you see the dog. Look at the kennel set up - it everything clean, is it a place that you'd be fine with boarding a dog at?
Take a look at the training equipment, is it well cared for and organized?
Look at the training site, do they have mock ups of building/windows, cars,etc. where they can train realistic protection scenarios? Is the area fenced for safety?

2) Take the time to look at the dog's paperwork. Check it's registration ( if any, there are plenty of excellent un-papered dogs ) and look closely through it's health records. Take a look at it's hip x-ray rating. If the dog was owned by someone else previously, find out *why* the dog was sold, and be demanding in a clear answer for this ( these are all points that should have been discussed over the phone before you made your trip there, by the way - you're reviewing the paperwork to double-check and verify facts now ).

3) Let the trainer introduce the dog to you. Observe the dog, is it confident and sure in it's surrounding? Does it look you over but also look to the handler to see if they accept your presence? Is the dog the correct weight, is it's coat in good shape? Does the dog look well-exercised and not like it's been in a crate for 23 hours a day?

4) After the dog has gotten use to you, it's time for your decoy to do their job.
Yes.....*your* decoy - to do this the right way, you'll need to bring a decoy that you can trust and that the dog has never seen.
Now look, this dog probably has received some meaningful training, but the odds are that it's been all on a single decoy ( not many vendors have multiple skilled decoys on their payroll, a good decoy is hard to come by ). What we want to see is how the dog reacts from a threat by a decoy that it doesn't know.

So you'll stay far out of the way and the handler will have the dog on a strong leash. You call your decoy via cell-phone to come in and the decoy will start to to loudly knock on the door to the office - watch the dog, he'd better bark here. The decoy escalates the door pounding and the prospective PPD had better be letting your decoy know to go elsewhere.
Finally the decoy forcefully swings the door open and talks in a loud and threatening manner - prospective PPD should be displaying outright aggression and dragging the handler towards the decoy ( all of these reactions by the dog are *without* commands ) who then leaves.

The handler now calms the dog to the point where you can pet it, etc. The decoy has changed into his bite suit out of sight and is now outside around the corner of the building or behind a van ( whatever you and the decoy and the vendor have decided on previously ). You and the handler and the dog walk outside and stroll calmly to the spot where the decoy is hiding - the decoy jumps out and attacks the handler and you watch for the reaction of the dog ( a slight startle is ok, but the dog has to recover immediately and bite the decoy. Ideally this happens so fast that the dog doesn't even zero in on the fact that there's a bite suit present, so speed is of the essence here ).

I highly suggest that you, the handler/vendor and the decoy walk through the exact steps of the scenario at least twice so everyone knows their part.
A dog that passes this test is the dog that you write the big check for.

Question...what should a PPD actually cost me?

ok, to begin here, I've said this before on different forums - the Personal Protection Dog world has what I consider to be the higher percentage of crooks and con men in the world of dogs today.

If buyers were educated and informed about what to look for and how to properly test a PPD, 80% of the PPD's for sale would fail a real selection test.
If prospective buyer's would look a bit more closely at many of the trainers that claim to be able to train a PPD, they would see that the trainers lack any meaningful experience that would qualify them to be training a dog that may be required to protect a person.

Ok, now that I've got that out of my system, what should a good PPD cost.

The initial cost is the dog, and ideally we are speaking of an 18 to 24 month old "green dog". The dog has had some training but is untitled.
Cost - $4,000 to $6,000 at the high end. And buying a dog that was bred in the U.S. and received it's core training here usually works out just fine.

Next, the cost of training - the more you want, the more that the dog costs. Also, if you are requesting an "odd" temperament ( people *always say "ok, I need a real man-killer, but it has to be good with my kids, family, friends, etc., etc., etc...... ) you're going to pay *a lot* more.

Let's be real here - the traits that make a dog a good PPD usually are not those that make it a fine family pet. A PPD is suspicious of strangers at least to a degree and reactive to it's environment ( folks, real PPD's are *not* placid, sorry to say ). This is part of a frequent scam, which is usually assisted by the buyer ( this always mystifies me ) A buyer may talk up how tough a dog they want, but if showed a weak dog that gets along with the family ( and would break and run away when needed ) they'll chose the weak dog every time. Now they can't face that they have a crap dog, so they build it up in their mind to be some type of Godzilla, and you know....they most likely will never need that dog to defend them, so it works out ok.....except that they paid three times what the shitter was actually worth and the scamming PPD trainer wannabe thinks that they can con everyone.
Sadly, they're often correct.

Back to training costs, a good training team should be able to produce a well trained PPD that is comfortable is most protection scenarios in two to four months of steady training. Considering that it takes a team to do this work, an addition of six to ten thousand dollars is a fair price.

So, there you have it - low end 10k to high end 16k. *That* is what a well trained PPD should cost.



So why may you ask, are people charging 35K for a PPD?
Because they're crooks.
And because there are stupid, stupid people that will waste money and not be smart enough to do their homework before hand.
( Wanna have some fun? Tell the suckers that their dog *isn't* worth 35K and watch the excuses flow - it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad. )

Question......what about follow up training to keep my PPD in a protection mind-set?

That selling price of a PPD should include intense handler training and life time follow-up training sessions to keep the dog at a well-trained level. Unfortunately, most clients do not live within a distance that allows them to easily return for follow-up, so the vendor and the client should arrange for the client to ( at the very least ) join their nearest SchH club or the like to maintain some level of training on the dog.

And a final post....

Alright, you've made the decision and you're willing to take the responsibility of increasing your personal safety - so what's the biggest step that you can take?

Get a gun.

In fact, get several, and here's the how and why of it.

Security, like an onion, comes in layers. Each layer adds another level of security and gives you just that bit more "edge" to coming out of a hostile encounter alive and well.
But nothing is going to increase your level of personal security as much as getting and learning to use a firearm properly ( and remember, this is coming from a hard Core PPD guy, I'm surrounded by serious dogs but they mainly act as a barrier to allow me time to get to a firearm......I'll take it from there )

Ok, now a gun that's not with you ( or you can't get to ) isn't worth spit. So your first choice of firearms will be a handgun, preferably in a caliber over .40 cal that will actually stop the bad guy. Purchase the gun and arrange to get some meaningful training with it, *please*! A firearm that you aren't competent with can be more of a danger to yourself and your loved ones that a bad guy.

I've included the websites for the best firearm training schools in the U.S.A. over in the "Links" section of this forum, take a look and figure out which one you can attend.

Next, after you've gained a skill level with your handgun of choice and have bought the required holster, magazine pouches, etc. - get a CCW, ASAP. A Concealed Carry Permit is available in any state in this Country that's worth living in ( sorry, I'm a stickler about this - if you live in a state that won't trust you to carry a legally owned firearm, you need to move, end of story. )

Most of the better firearm training courses also teach you about having a defensive mind-set, and that training alone is well worth it. And carrying a concealed handgun while you're out and about dramatically increases your personal safety.
So far, so good.

But you'll be in your own house for much of the day and evening hours, and you can do one step better than a handgun for your domicile - the defensive shotgun. I'm not going to get into brands, etc. but any well-made 12 gauge shotgun is ideal for home defense. Add a light kit to the gun ( most of your encounters will occur at night ) and night sights and you're set.
And remember those fine firearms instruction courses over in the "Links" area? They teach classes for the shotgun, also...

I would add a last recommendation if you own a larger piece of property, and that would be to get a defensive rifle for longer ranges. Now the odds of a civilian firing in a defensive situation at longer ranges would be rare, rare, rare ( Thank God!! ) but it might not be a bad insurance policy for folks in the Western states that have larger open ranges to consider. The AR-15 family in .223 caliber or upgrading to something in 7.62 caliber like the HK-91 or the M1A could be just the ticket here.

And yes...there are classes for those firearms also.....of course!



This is only a *very broad* overview of selection and training for defensive firearms, our discussion is only meant to stimulate some thought about taking the next step in saying "Hmmm...there's more to do to keep myself safe"...