Mr. DeChellis,

Thank you for the story. I am glad you and your dog are OK. I think you made the right decision. Of course I was not there, but from what you said, good job. You may have just saved your life by having your dog and having him trained. I want to comment along the lines of a previous post. I am sure you love your dog and that he means a lot to you, but if you are like me, my life and the life of my family members are more important than my dogs'. That is why people train their dogs for protection, incase the situation arises that you have to call upon the dog to do what he has been trained to do. You have spent your time and money to train your dog in this manner and it very well might have just saved your life. Of course you don't know the intentions of this man, but you and your dog stopped him before you were able to find out. I also agree that you don't want to wait and let him get within striking distance. Unfortunately, some members on this board live in a state that almost makes it illegal to defend yourself. Life is too precious to be afraid to defend yourself. You can not always rely on the cops. There are too many crimes and problems going on with too few many cops out there. So it is my opinion that you did the right thing. I for one will not be the one saying that I would try to run away from my own yard or wait to let this man get close enough to me to see if he really intends to harm me. If he keeps coming through a barking dog and two warnings, I would say he is lucky he didn't get chewed up from the dog and a couple of .45 rounds to his chest. Maybe I just have a different frame of mind than some on the board. I like how Chris and Will think. From the situation that you described, if someone doesn't think that this is justification enough to use the dog, he must be a tougher man than I. Like I said, I will never let anyone get close enough to me and my family to "wait" and see if they intend to harm me. Give them a warning and then act. Once again, good job on your training and thank you for your story.

Curtis

Very good post, Mr. Nash. Thank you for your job that you do.

Curtis

Mike Arnold,
I am not going to justify or change your mind about the fact that I defended myself. The facts are simple here; the perp was acting in an aggressive manner, wheather or not he had weapons was unknown to me at the time, he was clearly warned more than once not to proceed, he ignored all warnings including the barking dog. This was not just someone trying to hop my fence to take a short cut. It was a suprise attack in the middle of the night.

What I really want to make clear is the love I have for my dogs. You keep saying "I wouldn't have risked my dog, I value them too much", and so on with comments like that.

I love my dogs just as much as the next guy. They are my family, I have no kids. I take excellent care of my two dogs, they are very well taken care of in all aspects pet owner responsibility. Complete healthcare is provided with no expense spared. I spend several hours a week training, playing and socializing. My dogs go just about everywhere with me, they have a better life than many people in this country will ever know but most of all, I LOVE THEM. But my GSD Kyro, is trained to protect me. This is the first time in his 5 years of life that he was asked to truly defend me from a real threat. I am not afraid to say that I was scared, I genuinely felt threatened. There have been other minor incedents that I have spoke of on this board, but nothing this serious. Don't be mistaken, this was a very serious incident.
I love my dogs very very much. But the fact is, they are dogs. I am not being cruel when I say I value my life more than I do my dogs.

Remember something else; I am not the crimianl here.

To Jim Nash, I do live in a big city, and I have talked to several of the K9 officers before and after this happened.
You said, the person running threw the yard could have been an officer, very true. But when I said, What the F*** are you doing, Stop my dog will kill you, I'm quite sure an officer would have said something. This man did not say anything at all, which gave me all the more reason he was all about business. Even though I wasn't thinking about it at the time, I do feel that I covered all my bases, maybe the biggest mistake I made was not demanding a police report. At this time I'm still not sure if one was taken or not. They got my info and took my story, but as I said, I did decline to press charges.
Certainly I would not allow my dog to detain an innocent person, let alone a police officer.

And thanks to all of you for sharing your opinions on the matter, wheather we agree or not. For those of you who support me and the desicions that I made, that is very nice of you and I do sincerely appreciate it. Considering I could possibly have a civil case, it's still nice to know that there are people who understand the situation and realize sometimes you have to make tough calls in the moment.

It is a real shame that the police was hesitated to press those charges... I work in the law enforcmentment field in Miami Fl and i have also been a victim of a crime. You responded very well to your situation and so did your dog. He did exactly what he was supposed to do. I know how frustrating that can get. If the cops law didnt make an example of him, Im glad Kyro did ! Im glad it didnt get any worse than it did but the the sounds of it Kyro would have said "Bring it on buddy" !!!!

Way to go KYRO!!! Mike, the only thing that should worry you a bit is that this guy knows exactly where you live and you don't even know who he is. I don't know if your local police department has these but try and find out if the cops completed a Field Interview card on this guy. This should have all of the suspect's identifiers on it. Good luck and a job well done by your GSD.

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." I have a fenced in yard, the fence is 5ft tall. A man came running from around my house at full speed, jumped on the hood of my car "to use as a step up" and proceeded to atempt to jump my fence. Naturally Kyro started barking, I said to the man "DO NOT COME OVER THE FENCE, MY DOG WILL KILL YOU", Yes, I actually said it that way. I wanted to be very clear on what would happen if he proceeded. Initially I thought it was one of my drunken neighbors, So I was a little pist about jumping on my car"

Not sure I am understanding what happened here? Was he already in your yard when he jumped on your car. Or is he trying to jump the fence to get out of your yard.
but good job anyway for KYRO.

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I'd be rakeing with, my XD-40 holstered on my hip.

Nice pistol. This is what my husband has. I have the 9mm version, but they actually aren't much different to shoot. Hubby asked me why we needed a dog when he saw how well I could shoot - my first time ever shooting a gun. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Wouldn't it be good to get a clear statement from the police officers that answered the call to assist you if the trespasser tries to file a civil suit against you? Like Lou said, trespassing is enforced to varying degrees, but so is the duty that a possessor of land owes to trespassers.

I'm not an attorney, but in a situation like this I think it's best to make the call first (which you did) and have a report from the police to ensure that what they observed is on record.

Mike wrote: only have three GSDs, and hope that, they never have to use their training for 'real.' I value them too much to put them in harms way if I can prevent it."

In the early 90's, I was in a neighborhood where we had been broken into 6 times in 5 years, or so. Pretty common. I had a dog from Ed, a Nickie son, that I just had done SO MUCH with...personal protection on the body bite suit, muzzle, hidden sleeve, car, and even multiple agitators....just a wonderful, wonderful dog.

I was walking in the school yard behind the house, about 9 one night, when I saw a guy laying on the ground. It startled me because it was dark but the moon was out. Standing above him was a guy with a gun (looked like a large 9mm to me) pointed at the guy's head. I knew from the neighborhood that this was one drug dealer robbing another. The dog alerted on the guy with the gun (he was on leash). He pointed the gun at my head, looked at the dog, looked at the guy on the ground, stared at me while relieving the other guy of his wallet, and with the gun pointing at me, took off and ran across the field, over to a fence, hopped it, and was gone. All the while, my dog is straining and barking like crazy; especially when the guy ran.

the guy on the ground looked up and just walked away. I called after him, "hey, you wanna say thank you", and he just broke into a run. He had no intention on calling the police.

I called the local PD and went through it with them. The officer asked me why I did not send the dog after him when he had his back to me, and had that long run to the fence across the field.

Two reasons: 1, lawsuit New York.
2. He would have turned and shot my dog to death!

The cop was not at all happy with me for saying that, but I wasn't letting him go and get killed. The guy could have easily turned, pointed, and that would be the end of my dog.

The deterrent factor is strong and I like a dog trained to real life situations, but my hope is, 100 out of 100 times, that the perp will turn and leave; period.

I now live in a rural, safe neighborhood where people don't lock their doors. I live two doors down to one of the two local cops here. He told me that 6 homes in the area were broken into by local teens getting items to sell for oxys; which are huge here. It's nothing like NY, but I enjoy the training, the challenge, and the psychological deterent. the high school kids walk by and see him outside, hitting the A frame, or the sleeve; on an almost nightly basis. The hillbilly heroin is not worth a kid messing with a dog that is lit up...even if he is small!

Just thought I would throw in one of my stories... I have a few. None involved a live bite, though.

I think the discussion about lawsuits and other dangers having your dog protect you is very similar to the use of guns in protection. It has been well demonstrated that there are far more uses of guns for protection than are ever officially noted or reported to the police. If someone shows their gun to an attempted assailant, there are many jurisdictions where they would be very hesitant to call the police because they don't want to be bothered by the paperwork or maybe the gun is unregistered or even illegal or they just aren't sure about the consequences of letting the police know that they have a gun.

I do think that there is a similar effect in protection dogs. If my dog drove away an assailant I would have to think twice before calling the police. In Chicago he'd likely be labeled a 'dangerous dog' because of what he'd done and because of his training. Not to mention that I think that Chicago's animal control spays or fixes every dog they take in regardless of the reason they have them.

I suspect that there are many other times dogs do something in defense that just isn't reported because of the same reasons.

-Alan...