A Noob's Guide/Journey to a Personal Protection GSD - Page 5

PPD is a term that means con-men telling noobs whatever they want to hear and selling dogs that will most likely never be tested. you are just as likely to get a pound mutt as a $75k dog to do equal ppd work, the only difference is the look, the turn-key obedience and the prestigous hype.

i know guys that have sold good ppd dogs that are from the pound and/or have failed temp tests and got themselves on death-row. are ready source of test candidates that you can sift thru, and lets face it no matter what the breeding you will have to sort thru a lot of dogs to find one that will work - same applies to pound mutts, no difference.

as long as there is someone ready to buy there will be 10 guys ready to sell.


jmo

 fawndallas wrote: I have a noob's question, as some of the posts here have me questioning what I thought this meant. What temperament, action are you referring to by the word "civil" when referencing a desired trait.
 

Probably not the text book definition but to me "civil" is simply will the dog bite/attack an aggressor that is NOT in some type of gear i.e., bite suit, sleeve and such. Best way to tell in my opinion is put muzzle on the dog and have a decoy with no gear attack you. If the dog goes after the decoy he is "civil".

Michael That is always what I thought.

Paul

vk4gsd,
I agree you can get a good dog from the pound and could very well end up with a great dog. That was an avenue that I did look at. The only thing that stopped me from moving forward with that is I really need to know where the dog came from not only for its health issues but I needed to know if it would just go crazy one day. (yes, any dog could do that). In MY situation I simply cannot risk having a dog that I have unanswered questions about. I would/will have to walk by employee's, customers, delivery guys and so on and I just couldn't justify to myself the POTENTIAL added risk.

I think  your post was EXCELLENT....well written and non bashing at all, just facts based on your personal experiences.

Good luck with your dog!.

Michael Cox said: vk4gsd,
I agree you can get a good dog from the pound and could very well end up with a great dog. That was an avenue that I did look at. The only thing that stopped me from moving forward with that is I really need to know where the dog came from not only for its health issues but I needed to know if it would just go crazy one day. (yes, any dog could do that). In MY situation I simply cannot risk having a dog that I have unanswered questions about. I would/will have to walk by employee's, customers, delivery guys and so on and I just couldn't justify to myself the POTENTIAL added risk.
 

 I may be reading this wrong. Can you elaborate on "just go crazy one day," Michael? You meant that tongue-in-cheek, right?? 

"Civil" essentially means a dog that can bite with or without the sport oriented gear.  Some of the sport dogs are pretty much useless from that perspective, since you find a lot of excitement and energy to bite the decoy and the second the sleeve comes off, the dog ignores the man (against whom he was supposedly fighting against, till this very second) and runs away with the sleeve.  In a nutshell, the sleeve-happy sport dogs are just playing a game than indulging in protecting.

A "civil" dog on ther other hand is not focused on the equipment at all, and his/her focus is entirely on the intruder, and whether the intruder has the sleeve on or has any other equipment on, is immaterial.....and will bite for real when the situation demands.

The bi-color boy in my signature (of Slovak/Czech WL heritage) is genetically a civil guy, with nerves of steel.   Very settled when at home (and literally goes to sleep when he needs to be out of the way and asked to be in the crate, and tolerates all kinds of handling from little children - supervised of course - with good humor), but exceptionally alert and has absolutely no hesitation to go directly for a bite, when warranted (intruders etc).   Does not bark or whine needlessly, but will go and investigate anything and everything that is happening around him, and when something disturbs him, all you hear is a near-silent growl before he goes at it.    Very pleased at having "snagged" him.

Jenni,

No, I didn't mean it as a joke. I was trying to simply put that I need to make sure the dog is sound. If I have no idea where the dog came from and what its parents are like then how do I know if it will be a sound dog? I'm sure you will disagree with this and/or you are simply trying to bait me into something. But just so there is no misunderstandings on what I am saying, I have seen an animal just snap. I have actually witnessed this action. A perfectly sane dog just mentally broke and had to be put down.

You could say it was a freak accident and it very well may have been no one really knew why it happened it just did. So again for MY situation I chose to be as cautious as I can be and make the best desicion for ME.

MichaelCox, Jenni's was an honest question, since I absolutely would not expect any of my dogs (that I raised myself) to just snap.  Have never seen it happen - ever !  Unless we are talking about the dog having some kind of an epileptic incident or was otherwise affected by something else that causes erratic behavior.  

Thus when that statement appeared within your post, I was curious too, but decided to gloss over it, but Jenni finally zeroed in and asked the question that was probably in the minds of several of us. 

I hear dogs with PTSD do shut down  when the traumatic incident that triggered the PTSD, is encountered again.....but that is different from a normal dog just snapping for no discernible reason.  Now you are right that a dog from a pound might very well have had traumatic incidents that make it behave abnormally and also exhibit aggression/fear when the trigger-factors are encountered again.

 

As an example of a dog that did "just snap": a friend, who has had GSDs for many years, did what he thought was the responsible thing to do and adopted a GSD from a shelter. The dog was a SchH3 and around five. He was all proud of his new dog and showed him off all over town. A few months after getting "Lord", the guy took him to a family picnic. His elderly sister-in-law was sitting down petting "Lord" when "
Lord"snapped and ripped the woman's face up, requiring hospitalization. The man went to his truck and got his rifle and put a bullet in "Lord"......he BOUGHT his next GSD puppy from a BREEDER and that dog is now seven years old, and the "best" dog the man ever had. The moral of the story is, with a rescue, it's a crap shoot !!!!!