It's funny you should bring this up; I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Carbon is just now 11 months old, and he's been 'protecting' me for about 2 months now.
We are a very playful family and if there was any wrestling going on, between me and anyone, Carbon would get upset and lunge at them and try to nip, regardless of who starts it (if I would playfully whack my husband in the butt, or if he whacked me in the butt wouldn't matter, the target would always be my husband).
We of course decided to try to eliminate wrestling when the dog was around. It's interesting because Carbon did not sound aggressive when he jumped up, in fact, he sounded confused about it. I may be projecting here, but he would bark and whine and seemed confused. Like he knew he was supposed to protect me but he really likes my husband...sort of a "why do you make me do this" sort of situation.
![:) smiley for :)](http://leerburg.com/forums/images/graemlins/default/smile.gif)
The thing I'm keeping in mind, though, is that Carbon isn't mature yet. When he is, the dynamic might change and the whining/jumping/nipping might become more serious.
He did not get corrected when he did this to my husband, he was just given an 'out' command, and then a 'leave it' at first. This may sound strange to people, but in my mind (and luckily also in my husband's) he was doing the right thing. He was protecting me. That's a GOOD instinct, and one he was bred for. We didn't encourage it by praising him, either, because I don't want to actually encourage him to jump on my husband (we're newlyweds, after all, give me a few years!
![;) smiley for ;)](http://leerburg.com/forums/images/graemlins/default/wink.gif)
Just kidding!).
Incidentally: He DID get a correction, and a strong one, when he tried to do this with my 8 year old son. It NEVER happened again with my son. He's very clear on the fact that he is never to be anything other than gentle with my kid (or any kid), no matter what. It's harder to prevent kids from slipping up and wrestling or acting nuts, so as far as I'm concerned BOTH the dog and the kid need to have some manners and rules around each other. Just putting Carbon away isn't enough...in fact, it seems to build his intensity.
So, we don't wrestle around the dog anymore, and if we're in another room and we slip up, he'll remind us immediately by very quickly running into the room we're in and giving my husband the intense "stare." By that point, the sound of toenails running into the room has alerted us and we've stopped the monkey business by the time Carbon gets there. My husband calls him the "enforcer." Five minutes later, Carbon's back to being a big ball of love.
So here's my thinking: Some dogs are just naturally protective. It's one of the reasons man first found dogs useful and kept them around the campfire, after all. BUT, humans have taken dog's instincts and refined them and channeled them to make dogs both more useful AND safer to be around, and that's what I think I need to do with Carbon.
It's not enough to just have this raw protective instinct...that free-will instinct, IMO, is much more dangerous to an average person than a dog who is trained to only bite on command. Keeping him contained is not enough, IMO. He needs to learn when to restrain himself, and when to stop the aggression on command. The impressive part, to me, of the protection phase of Schutzhund is not that we can get dogs to attack, but that we can get them to WAIT FOR and STOP an attack when their handler says so, with a single word.
So to that end, I've decided that it's in everyone's best interest, including Carbon's, to drive the 4 hour round trip to get him involved in Schutzhund. I think that will make things clearer in his mind. I'm not going to eliminate this instinct he has, even if I wanted to. The best thing to do is to give it structure, and an "off" switch so to speak, and let him know that *I* decide when I need help so he doesn't have to make those decisions himself.
![an image](http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r159/Puppickle/carbssmall-1.jpg)
Carbon