Thanks Barbera, I know Norman/Gordo. Nice chap and a great dog.

I will keep you posted how the training goes.

jon

Hi Will,

I am not a yuppie. I understand your standpoint, though you have clearly seen poor examples of boel if you are basing your opinions on personal experience.

I agree that there are alot of cr@p mastiff breeds - I have alot of experience with several & own various mastiff types myself. I also agree that to be taken seriously BB should be titled.

jon

cheers Mike,

I look forward to some interesting discussions.

jon

Hey Jon,
Yes, my opinion is based on personal experience with the breed, and the trouble is not that I've seen bad examples of the breed - but that I've *never* seen a good example of the breed. Every single Boerboel that I've seen has been a nervey fear biter that will run away if given the chance.
And when that runs into a dozen dogs of a very rare breed, that's a real bad sign in my eyes.

Until someone can prove to me firsthand that these dogs are worth a cr*p, they're just a status symbol for the rare breed crowd that can't begin to live up to their hype.

People would be better off with a $400 backyard bred AKC GSD than a multi-thousand dollar Boerboel. At least then they wouldn't have to using so many excuses when the dog fails. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />


If you're not a yuppie, my sincere apologies, so far most of the owners that I've met for this breed have been.

If your dog has actually protected you and you have a police report or a newspaper article of the event, please contact me as I'm writing a book on real world dog protection and I'd like to review the case! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Hi Will,

Im not interested in wasting time trying to tell you that there are incredible boerboels out there, without seeing them yourself it would be pointless. Besides, to be honest it makes no difference if you like the breed or not. With regards to my Boel protecting me, its not something I want to put in some article. I have joined the forum to learn, not to debate if my dog is a cr@ppy bag of nerves, as I already know he's not.

jon

I don't mind you wasting a little time. I am always on the lookout for nice dogs. If you have, or know of, some really incredible working Boerboels. . .where are they?

Are they titled, trained, proven? Are there videos of them working? Documented cases of working?


I'd love to hear about a good dog somewhere, or see a good dog if one is somewhere near me.

I've heard of the Colorado and nearby states BB's and nothing good... Scandal after scandal with that group. I was just recently talking to someone about two mastiffs that were purchased by a reputable mastiff breeder (different kind, not BB), and the dogs wouldn't play tug games either. The guy ended up giving the dogs away before they were a year old. The breeder is one of the few breeders who actually tests the heck out of his stock, in ways that most wouldn't approve of. Does playing tug have anything to do with actually protecting? If a dog won't play tug, does that always mean it won't protect? That had me wondering...

Will, what were the BB's like that you saw? What makes you think they were nervy and would run? You know what happens, you get people who buy these dogs, and don't realize that they require hard corrections at times. They think the puppy is cute, and want to let it be a puppy, and then they have an out of control monster with aggression issues, because they never properly raised the dog... Then they get too big, and if the owners couldn't correct the dog when it was small, when it's extra large, it gets put down because the issues are now magnified by 1000%.

I'm not saying all boerboels are great, but like any breed, there's crap in it. People get a dog, they don't know jack but they want to be a breeder and make money selling pups. It's sickening, especially when these byb's end up giving the whole breed a bad name. For any breed you name, I'm sure people have seen garbage.

Robert, here is a boerboel working

http://www.nepstein.neptune.com and click "enter" then click "enter as guest"

This guy has worked his butt off. He's normally a GSD guy for 20 something years I think, but decided to broaden his horizons. The dog is not a herder, but it looks pretty good for a mastiff breed... The breeder of this dog owns a ranch, and his boerboels do real work there. There's also John Blackwell who breeds boerboels and he has a good reputation. Unlike most of the rare breed mastiffs, the BB people (aside from the Colorado and surrounding states group) are intelligent decent people who seem to want to better the breed and not use them as a means of support.

We have a couple that have come thru the club, and they
were not good PPD dogs they showed to much unreliability,
low nerve threshold and very over the top defensive biting
mostly(fear reactive behaviour)when working on the sleeve,not very happy to engage the helper.
I agree with Van Camp, they are not suited to PPD work,
you may get the odd one, who shows some potential but
at the end of the day, they are better as pets.
They become very man orientated quickly and are not able to differentiate between a benign situation and a real threat.
Good luck with your training hope it works out for you.

Michelle, what you described is what I've heard was typical of the boerboel temperament. There's seems to be a variety of temps though. You have the dogs dumbed down by the show breeders, you have the ultra defensive dogs like you described, and then there's a variety that a man named Reiner Geel of South Africa describes here as stable. From what I've been told, the BB is very similar in temperament to the Fila Brasiliero. I think nervy and fear reactive is subject to opinion, and I wouldn't trust the opinion on someone who specializes in herders because floppy eared and pointy eared dogs are at two opposite ends of the spectrum. If a dog will engage and take out a threat, is it nervy? I'm not sure, I'd have to have a herder and floppy to compare behavior. Are dogs like the fila and BB nerve bags? That would depend on who you ask. People who own them for PP would tell you no way, people who specialize in herders would say POS.

Also, the BB is a dog that's more of a cross breed, bred for it's purpose. I've heard that people over in SA didn't attach the name BB to the dogs until the American's discovered them, and then most of their culls were sent over here. But people in the country who actually utilize the dogs for work don't call them boerboels, or didn't until they became in demand in the USA. A portion of the original make up of the dog was geared toward creating a dislike and suspicion of the idigenous tribes in SA, with Rhodesian Ridgeback, and the hottentott along with the more familiar breeds EM etc. Very similar to the Fila, who was originally bred to catch escaped slaves. They're both primitive breeds, not suited for sport, so sport tests for breedworthyness or temp. checks don't tell an awful lot unless the goal is to compare them to herders. If you took a boerboel out of a field where he worked, and brought him to a sport training meeting the dog would be labeled garbage, but back at his home, he worked long hours and did his jobs very well (hypothetically speaking). It's comparing apples to oranges. A premier REAL working dog would most likely NOT make a good sport or competition dog. Dogs are bred for their purposes. One isn't better than another it's just different. Different requirements require different breeding plans and goals where temp. are involved.

"That would depend on who you ask. People who own them for PP would tell you no way, people who specialize in herders would say POS."

Funny...all these people that own the Mastiff-type breeds can't offer any proof whatsoever that their dog will actually protect them, yet those "herding" dogs owners will make up progressively harder and harder tests to work their dogs to prove their worth.
Hmmm...that's a tough one - trust the folks that test their dogs under severe conditions to prove their protective ability, or trust the Mastiff-type breed folks that provide excuse after excuse about their breed. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Barb, sorry, but the proof is in the pudding. GSD's and Mal's are used as ppd's and Police Service canines through out the world, including the home of origin of the Boerboel, RSA. The Boerboel ( and all the mastiff type breeds are used......no where ). That should be a big clue of the value of the Mastiff-type dogs as a serious working dog. They're status symbols, not working dogs, and their actual ability to protect people on a *reliable* basis is low to non-existent.

No *serious* ppd vendor sells any of the Mastiff type breeds as a ppd ( they're a popular dog with the wannabe's ppd seller's, however )

And I'm sorry, when you start calling a Boerboel "A premier REAL working dog", it's hard for me to stop laughing.
One *is* obviously better than the other, and there are plenty of ways to test it, but the mastiff-type crowd will always provide excuses.



Comparing these types of dogs is like comparing two sets of car owner:

The members of car owner type "A" regularly race their cars and the cars are used throughout the world under serious conditions. They establish the standard for "working" cars.

The members of car owner type "B" make claims that their cars are every bit as good as the cars of the members of car owners type "A" ( and in fact will often say that their cars are in fact superior ) but they don't race them and their cars are not used anywhere in the world for serious "working" car work. The "B" owners will however provide excuse after excuse about their cars why their cars don't have to be proven in any way to make them the equal to the cars of group "A" that are regularly put through their paces.


Oddly, the car owners of the "A" type cars that do all the work and testing notice that the car owners of the type "B" cars tend to be mainly made of inexperience car owners.