Paul Mudre wrote:
My challenge at the moment is that my dog is happy to see anybody who comes to the door. anybody who comes to the door.

Paul it sounds like your dog has little defense drive (defensive aggression). A dog with high defensive aggression can be socialized night and day-- and still be taught to be "suspicious" of strangers in about 3 minutes.

In contrast, a dog little or no defensive aggression may be difficult or impossible to train as a personal protection dog. However, these dogs are sometimes preferred for sport work because they don't percieve many things as a threat.

Paul,
How old is your dog? If he is under 18 mos-2 yrs, I would not want to see him showing defensive agg nor alot of suspicion.
As for PSDs not being petting by everyone, how many K9 handlers get their dogs as pups? By the time a PD gets a dog, the socializing/imprinting/confidence building has been done b/c the dog is 18 mos-2 yo. (Someone did mention PSDs, right? Or do I need to go to my crate and finish my coffee?)

Joy, I didn't see any mention of PSDs... but some of PPDs... ha ha.

But you are right about the age issue. We especially don't want to encourage any youngster to be "suspicious"... its just not healthy.

The bottom is you generally can't screw up a dog by socializing it.

But, you can screw up most dogs by not socializing.

Ok, have had more coffee now. I think this has become a real hot button for me b/c locally there seems to be an epidemic of folks purchasing byb's, then keeping them away from strangers, then calling to tell me they have the world's best *protection dogs* and would like more help making them *mean* and *attack* dogs. Dunno where this is coming from.
I *do* always refer them to this Board, knowing they aren't likely to listen to me anyway. . .
Perhaps the difficulty is in what the term *socializing* really means. If we're talking about a million strangers handling your pup, that isn't necessarily helpful either.
I would caution Paul to be very, very cautious in trying to put *suspicion* into his dog at home. You can really screw up a dog this way and wreck him for any type of future protection work. Barking at strangers at the door is based in terriroriality, rather than defense. It comes w/maturity in most dogs. It can also be taught fairly easily w/out making the dog nuts.

This is an interesting debate. I don't protection train, nor do I plan to (I'm a Lab person!), however, I do find the subject worth thinking about, so I'm going to stick my nose in here and comment. Don't mind me!

What interests me is that from a purely canine behavioral standpoint, I would think that the issues raised here would be pretty clear cut! First of all, GSDs are by nature "aloof" with strangers, it's in the breed standard for temperament. In other words, this is not something you train, it's something that develops as the dog matures. Secondly, a protection dog does not respond to *strangers* as threats, it responds to *body language* as a threat. By teaching the dog to be suspicious of all strangers, what you are doing is creating a potential fear aggression problem, or at least undermining the dog's confidence.

Of course, all of those points have been raised. However, what baffles me is that this seems like basic stuff when it comes to dogs in general, not just protection trained dogs.

It's the body language that cues the intent and the appropriate response, not whether or not the dog knows the person. I would not want a GSD (or any dog) who is afraid of strangers and trained to bite. That is a scary proposition, and not a good combination.

You don't have to train your GSD to be "aloof" (they're not Labs, they do have a certain aloofness as a basic part of their personality), and with maturity, your GSD will alarm bark when strangers come to the door. All dogs do that, it's not something you train. As a matter of fact, most people wish their dogs wouldn't! Imagine that!

What I would do is allow the dog to greet visitors (if they enter the home), then send him or her to his or her bed in the corner. This teaches the dog acceptable behavior around people and allows for socialization. When the dog knows what is expected, he or she will be more confident, not nervous, shy or fearful (unless the dog is nervous, shy or fearful by nature, but we're talking about stable dogs here). I would do this with ANY dog, including PPDs.

Paul,

Depending on the age of the dog I would expect that the dog should be happy to see everybody. At 1 1/2 to 2 it will switch with the territorality. It can get to be a real pain at the door. They pick this up on there own. If they don't it is really easy to teach a trained dog to bark at the door. Just have someone come up and beat on the door a bit and they will kick right off.

If the dog hasn't been taught to out at the door and/or if the dog is overly suspicious of strangers you will not be able to get them to out and be able to let anybody in the house. If they are suspicious of people they just won't back off b/c they feel the need to defend their territory.

Going back to my previous post, if the dog is trained to be suspicious of strangers when they mature the defense and territoriality will kick in and you will have the types of problems I discussed earlier and it will be harder to socialize that out. If the dogs have been taught to react to behavior then the dog will deal with a problem no matter who it is.

I will give an example of what I am talking about. We live in Arizona, our relatives live in Utah and Idaho. If my dog was suspicious of people they don't know I have a problem when our folks come to visit. The way my dogs are trained once you have been allowed in the house you are fine and accepted as part of the family. If this wasn't the case I could not leave my parents alone with my dogs loose in the house. If you are staying at my house (have clothes here so the scent is in the house) you can come and go as you please. If you are not staying here (no scent left in the house) once you leave you aren't allowed back in.

The other half to this is the situation where someone you invite in turns on you and attacks. Make up whatever scenario works for you. My dogs will take them in a heart beat, even if you had just been playing with them. It is the behavior that sets off the protection. Now if I had taught them that some friends are always ok and that person turned on me the dog would do nothing. In our house there is one person that can come in uninvited and that is the guy that takes care of the dogs when we are away. Other than that no one can come in uninvited. Even the neighbors.

One trainer I worked with at one point in time did something interesting with her dogs. She taught the dogs an out command that could be given by anyone so that the dogs would let somone in if needed to get the dogs out, for a fire in the house etc.... With my dogs they will let the neighbor handle them once they are out of the house and they have a doggie door. So I have this covered to get my other pets taken care of in need.

The only problem I have ever run into with this type of training is once we had a dog with limited access in the house. Someone broke in to the area that the dog couldn't go into. Since they were in the house the dog didn't take them out. We just moved a dog around so that to get in you had to go through one or the other dog. End problem. In our current house there is only one available room for this and the dog sees that door as a door to the out side.

Although handler dependant to some extent the issue become predictability, as Joy said. It is often hard to predict how a dog will react to a situation they have never seen before. With a well trained dog the first option should not be to react defensively. If the dog has been taught to be suspicious of strangers then it is a short step to a defensive reaction and an accidental bite. If the dog sees people as OK and behavior as a problem then the dog will react to a problem behavior and not to the unfamiliarity of the person. If the only reason the dog bit is they didn't know the person that is a big problem, if the person did something stupid and got bit you will be in much better shape. The other point here is it is impossible to be in contact with the dog 24/7. You have to have a good idea what the dog will do when you aren't there.

What if the dog gets out of the house yard? Do you want them to be suspicious of the stranger that will try to pick them up to keep them from being hit by a car? How hard should it be for animal control to get the dog? It does happen no matter how careful you are. Once our two got out, both bite trained. The neighbors kids brought them back. They ran right up to them to be peted. These are neighbors down the street that just have seen the dogs walking with us in the neighborhood.

So many things can and do happen in life. The safer your dog is with other people the less likely there will be a problem and an unintentional bite. This is why we train that it is the behavior, not the person that elicits the response. Most protection breeds have a natural level of suspicion that needs to be harnessed and directed. When needed it will kick in. It needs to be controled or it can get out of control. Most of the problem dogs I see and am asked about are protective breeds that have not been adequately socialized.

You guys are a wealth of knowledge and experience. I'm glad to be able to learn from you all. Richard, you sound like you have some real good dogs and what you said sounds pretty sensible and practical.

Dave, as far as my dog having or not having defense drive, isn't it possible he could simply be a stable, friendly dog? I had a K-9 trainer tell me my dog was too friendly and upon "attacking" me soon learned he had totally read my dog wrong.

Let me clarify, I never said I wanted my dog to be suspicious. Someone injected that. I only said I wanted him to be aloof, which is not the same thing. I also said that I don't want him to be petted by the cable guy, repair man, Jehovah's witness, etc. By the way, my dog is 19 months old.

Thanks again all for your input. It all sounds real good to me.

Paul,

The other thing we do is ALWAYS tell the dog it is OK prior to letting a stranger pet the dog. If there is someone I don't trust or I don't have time to deal with the time involved I don't tell the dog it is OK. This becomes an obedience issue just like ait or stay.

With your dog I would wait 6 months and if it doesn't change on it's own, then train an alert at the door. Start when you are home and have some one pound on the door and raise a ruckus and tell the dog to watch (if needed). Once he is barking reliably with the command (if needed) drop the command, re-enforce with the command if required until reliable. Then do the same thing when you are not home. It shouldn't take much. It is basicly just fence agitation.

Originally posted by Paul Mudre:

Dave, as far as my dog having or not having defense drive, isn't it possible he could simply be a stable, friendly dog?

Paul... I never said that your dog had no defense...However, based on what you told us about being friendly toward everyone-- we can use the principles of logic to determine that your dog is probably toward the lower end of the defense scale.

Most trainers that I know (myself included) see this as a good thing. And, it is not only possible, but likely that your dog is stable and friendly given what you describe.

Richard, thanks for the extra tips. I do tell him it's ok when appropriate.

Dave, I guess I misinterpreted what you meant. My dog is calm, confident and friendly. Yet in all of the home invasion, car jacking and other scenarios with which he's been confronted, he responded immediately and was ferocious. As well, he always outs the instant I tell him. He's there man. I just need to mold him to do a couple of the little things I mentioned.

Thanks again everyone for your input. I hope others learned as much as I did. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />