I would consider that test an entry level test, not a breeding test, less than a level 1. I don't think that test will be given to my dog. Honestly I'm not sure what goes into the evaluation process. Everything done with Tigger was done under my guidance as part of a plan of action to modify his over eagerness to defend, and then to prepare him for what he could encounter as well as see his reactions. I'm not willing to do that with Savannah and my 'decoys' quit anyway. She's anti social. The handshake part of the test I linked may go over okay, if the judge doesn't stare into her eyes for too long. If he did, forget it, she wouldn't let him get near us. A CGC would be out of the question for her. When I did it with Tigger, a woman came careening towards him with a stroller when he was in sit stay and almost hit him! Savannah wouldn't go for that. Then they took a pot cover and clanged it over Tiggers head with a spoon for what seemed like forever. With Savannah I don't know the woman would get past the first clang. Not to mention if someone happened to stare into her eyes. We'd leave humiliated, possibly kicked out. I wouldn't even put the testers in that predicament.

The trainers I spoke to are looking for a social dog to do PP with. There's not a social bone in her body. I've made her more tolerant of the eye contact thing with strangers, but it's visibly obvious that she is dying to threaten, and I know she forces herself to stay quiet because she doesn't want to get in trouble. I did find one trainer who has no requirements except that the dog has good OB, which she does, but I don't want to train her if the training is going to be detrimental to her and unsafe. If they say she's not safe, I'll just do tracking with her or something, and continue her OB. I'd like to get three opinions on her, with one coming from at least one trainer who has bandog experience, more specifically with sharp bandog experience. I don't feel comfortable not teaching her to bite, because then she won't learn when it's appropriate to. I have no benchmark to compare her to. She's been socialized to death, and hasn't had any bad experiences.

What I don't know is if she's like that because she feels fear? She's already showed a willingness to bite. Fear aggression? Dominant just with strangers? Or is it that she needs to do protection work to work off that pent up drive that only bite training will do. The problem I forsee with bite training is that she'll work in defense. I'd need a highly skilled trainer who could channel the defense to prey. At least this is what I heard. I don't want to do anything like that with her if she doesn't have the right temperament. I'm not going to take her to be evaluated until she's at least 2. No matter what I'd still love her and keep her <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> She's a cool dog aside from the quirks I mentioned.

What parts of the test would Ben fail?

barbara, it's really difficult to tell from your description if savannah is dominant or fearful. maybe if you could describe more her body language in various situations we could help you evaluate. she sounds very aggressive, but it also sounds like you know how to handle her. she would be too much for me.

how is she with you? any dominance displayed towards you or your family? or is it just with strangers?

if her aggression is a symptom of very high drive, why not exercise her very hard. do you run or ride or horses? bicycle? is her OB good enough that you could take her on long horseback or bike rides? i know further east of you there are some very nice state parks. might be worth a drive 2-3x a week. ben also has high drive, and we take him on hikes up steep mountains a few times a week to wear him out. it's good for us, too!

hope you find a good trainer for her.

ben aced his CGC at the age of six months, then he started showing fear in situations he'd never shown it before. in retrospect, i think it was adolescence, because he has really settled down a lot in the past six months to a year (he's now 3 1/2 yrs). his vet and i were talking about it the other day; she noted he had the potential to become a fear-aggressive dog during his adolescence, but she thinks he's fine and quite trustworthy now. we worked a lot with him to build up his confidence, and it paid off. this is the first time i've had a dog that needed special handling, so we may have made some mistakes with him until we understood what we were dealing with.

he remains aloof towards strangers. if someone comes into our home, he'll sit/stay on command and let me handle it, and then on his own terms, in his own time, he'll approach the stranger and check them out. he also doesn't like people looking in his eyes, but it won't provoke aggression, just backing off. some people he even wants them to pet him. but he's very particular, other people he will run away from. he's just not a very sociable guy when it comes to strange humans. he loves other dogs though!

he'd be fine on ignoring a neutral stranger, as long as they ignore him. he doesn't like unsolicited attention.

he sometimes startles when a bicycle or runner comes up from behind, though not always. he does recover, though. he's also been known to try to give chase! usually he seems to be playing when he does this. though if he's in heel, he looks to me in the presence of any distractions. he probably would display avoidance walking through a crowd, especially if people paid him attention.

if he's put in a sit or down, he will hold it until hell or high water no matter what approaches him, though if it is another dog, he will never be indifferent. he'd probably tremble with excitement, wanting to play, and look to me for a release. he's been trained to sit/stay on walks with other dogs to play with as a reward.

so, in the first part, the main risk is that he will spook. he's pretty spooky and shy. otoh, sometimes he just isn't paying attention and would give them perfect indifference.

in the second part, he would definitely lunge and warn the assailant off, but if pressed hard, he might go into avoidance. 50/50 if he will out and heel after being so heavily stimulated. and the part i am really unsure of him is at the end, where after all that intensity, he is expected to be calm in the face of the judge. when ben has been highly stressed, he can stay that way for quite a while. if he gets reactive, he often continues to be reactive.

just to be clear, this is NOT your typical mastiff temperament, nor is it typical of his line. he's been very slow to mature, and he's been steadily improving and calming down. i trust him now with people, whereas a year ago i didn't. heck, the mailman can come into the yard now and he doesn't even look up. friends let themselves into the yard and come to the back door and he barks a warning, but he no longer does the fear-aggressive lunges he was doing as a teen. so, we hope he's growing out of it. he's still very puppyish in a lot of ways, and evidently this line is slow to mature both physically and emotionally.

your girl may also "even out" as she matures. hope so, she sounds like she has a lot of good points.

Her body language is ears forward, tail up, body puffed up. Absolutely no dominance toward the family. She's a very sweet and loving dog with us, eager to please. She's actually the most respectful, obedient dog I've ever had. If my husband calls her, she'll come to me for permission first, automatically lets me out doors and go first up and down stairs without me ever having had to teach her, she won't take a biscuit from my mouth if I try to get her too. She'll back away thrashing her head from side to side saying NO WAY! I've never seen a dog with such an inherent level of respect, almost like it's bred in there. She's very well behaved, and never got in trouble until she started reacting to people's stares, which is when she started receiving her first corrections. Then I had to go out of my way to find things to set her up for to acclimate her to corrections so she knew what they were about. Her issue is with people, she's highly suspicious of them, even family and friends that she's used to. She'll sit on the other side of the room and just watch closely, no matter how long there over. She like Ben doesn't like attention from people and will avoid letting them touch her for the most part, if she can. I can count on one hand the times she's behaved friendly and welcoming to someone.

As for exercise, we live within walking distance of Smithpoint State Park, and there's 10 miles of ocean beach there for her, as well as the salt marsh and bay side beach we go to. I wouldn't take her bike riding with her temperament. While she has good enough ob for it, I wouldn't be able to watch her as closely like if I was standing next to her. Horse back riding would require bonding her to horses first or she might be inclined to try to take the horse down. Some of the dogs her breeder bred went to a game preserve to take down large game, and the other side of her lines are from hog catching lines in Texas. Good ideas, but not things I would be comfortable trying with her without massive preparation. I was more wondering if she needed specific exercise like bite work. If she wasn't getting enough exercise she would be destructive I would think and get into trouble. Her problem is specific, she doesn't like strangers. She's only lunged once, and it was appropriate for her to, normally it was just a deep bark to the starers. Her breeder told me bitework would help her.

She doesn't ever startle. She's been exposed to high powered gun fire from an FAL, AR15, .22, shotgun, professional grade fireworks, nail guns, saws, compressors, generators and more without a startle. For a little while when she was younger, I thought she was deaf. She used to attack the lawn mower and weed wacker when they were running. No issues with rocky surfaces, unsteady surfaces, slick, etc. She's been acting in ways she shouldn't since she was 4 months. Ex. my neighbor came to borrow a ladder and some tools. My husband took him in the back yard to the shed, told him to go behind the shed and get the ladder, while he went in the shed to get the tools. When the guy tried to take the ladder, Savannah backed him up against the shed and started barking at him till my husband came. She was too little to be doing things like that, and I heard it's a temp. problem when they behaved in such ways at young ages. She's a myriad of contradictions, no fear of anything you'd expect if a dog had weak nerves, but this distrust and reacting to strangers since she was very little which makes me worry that it's fear based, because she's been socialized a great deal and continues to be. I can't complain too much, after Tigger she is a walk in the park.

My biggest problem has been trying to find a trainer with sharp bandog experience. Bandog experience alone is hard to find. I have a really nice one lined up, but his experience is with a few social bandogs and corso's. He also mentioned he likes a social dog for PP. So far I haven't told any of the trainers I spoke to about her temperament because I didn't want to bias them. After they meet and evaluate her I'll tell them things I've seen in her. I'm hoping Savannah grows out of it, but something tells me these things are just a part of who she is. My biggest concern is that its fear based.

I'm glad Ben's doing better! The lunging part must have been scary because he's a big boy. At least he grew out of it. Have you considered taking him to the ATT temperament test? From all the progress he's made, maybe tests would be a set back for him. Are you in contact with any of his litter mates owners? Do you know how they've behaved as they matured and what they're like now?

barbara, i'll leave savannah's diagnosis to your evaluators, because it is impossible without seeing her, but on first glance from your description, it sounds like dominance. fearful behavior is ears down, whites of eyes showing, a hunched posture, tail down.

i've never heard of bite work helping a dog with her issues, so i am of no help to you there. i'm sure lots of people here could advise on that. why would bite work be more effective in channeling drive than hard exercise? (asked to the forum at large).

this may surprise you, but i don't see her disinterest in/aversion to strangers as a problem. as long as she is not an inappropriate threat, and you can have people in your home without her going "off," i would simply respect her preferences that people she doesn't know leave her alone. she's a one-man dog, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

she sounds like she has good nerves and good manners. unless there are other worrisome incidents you haven't shared, i would simply respect her need to be ignored by strangers and see if you still think she has a problem.

my personal bias is that mastiffs should not be trained in PP. i think you would do better with a GSD or a Mal, if that is what you are after. PP is a bad fit with the mastiff temperament, and savannah does have many aspects of the mastiff temperament, as you have described her. many mastiffs are very aloof. it's just more pronounced in her.

i don't have plans to test ben in any way in future. he's a family companion and pack dog. i did have some ambitions for him for the obedience ring, as he is very good at it, and loves it, but he hates the crowds at shows and i don't need to put him through that. he adores children and is very good with them, but i don't think he could pass the therapy dog evaluation, so i'm not going to do that, either. he'll keep an eye on what is going on on our property, and when we're alone in the mountains, and keep my feet warm on cold winter days. that's enough. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

i am in contact with the owner of one of his siblings, who loves to show and earned his international championship at a very young age. they have a lot of things in common, but ben's brother is much more sociable. ben hates to be shown.

I thought dominance at first also, but she doesn't display these behaviors toward anyone in the house. If she wasn't so respectful, I would think yes for sure. After reading Ed's article on dominant dogs, and others she doesn't fit. She's never challenged anyone in the house. The one time she came close was when she received her first correction with the prong collar. She turned around with her mouth open, was met by my surprised and then hard look (you do you're in for it), thought better of it and kept walking. Aside from that, that's it.

I don't see the aversion to strangers as an issue either. I took at as wariness for a long time. I saw the barking for staring as inappropriate aggression. She would also bark for loud crowds, and people walking aggressively. For the most part, the behavior is gone, but I still see a desire. Occasionally she'll have a lapse. Just recently I was talking to a new neighbor, he came to approach and shake my hand, she wouldn't let him. She held her stay, but barked a warning not to advance. I'm considering getting a muzzle to test her intent. Have someone look into her eyes like any regular person might do, then come within our space and start talking friendly. I need to see what she'd do.

Well, it sounds like you have things down pat with Ben <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I'll do whatever is in Savannah's best interests. It's not a big deal. I wanted to try something competitive with her too, but not sure it's possible. If I was an experienced sport person maybe I could pull it off, but coupled with her temp. it's probably not possible.

This thread startd out to be about The Boerboel Breed of dogs. It has morfed into too many other things.

The board is not someplace to discuss your personl pet. Its about training dogs.

also recommend the subject of training personal protection dogs be limited to those people who have actually done the training and not those who have never trained a PP dog. It's OK to ask question about but I am not interested in OPINIONS OF THE SUBJECT from none trainers. Everyone has an opinion on how to train dogs - the problem is not a lot have the experience to back up their opinion (especially on bite work training) with experience. Thats how bad information gets passed around.

This thread is closed