Personal Protection Dog Training

[Tonka]

I’m fairly dubious of using dogs as weapons... well family dogs anyway. Fine for the fuzz. As for training I think it also depends a lot on the individual dog. Sometimes even professional training just creates a dangerous dog. It can be a throw of the dice.

I used to work with a dog unit doing private security patrols. I wasn’t a handler, my role was the backup for the dogs!
One night one of the dogs caught a ‘trespasser’ and refused to let go on the release command. By the time his handler got him off, the ‘suspect’ was missing a bicep. After that he had a bit of a blood lust, and turned on his handler a couple of times. He was understandably going to be retired, but on his last day on the job he turned on me. Whilst his handler was off on a skive, he just clamped onto my wrist while I was opening a door. Now I’m a bit soppy with animals, and I don’t like hurting them if poss, even crazed German Shepherds trying to bite my hand off. So I left his eyes alone, and just forced his jaw open (with thumb and forefinger… the same way you give pets tablets) and then got a good twist on his collar and carried him at arms length to a high wall and dropped him over the other side. It wasn’t high enough to hurt him, but high enough that he couldn’t reach me.
I don’t know what happened to him afterwards, but he was unsuitable for work, and would have made a very unpredictable and dangerous pet.

I suppose the point of my anecdote is that you don’t want to turn a family pet into an unpredictable and dangerous pet. I’m not saying don’t do it… but what training is given is very important. Better a dog that is useless at protecting your family than a dog that one day bites the face off one of them… all it takes is one bad day for an otherwise loving dog to bite… I have a load of examples of that too, but I’ve rambled enough. I’ll try to end on something concise to put my point across… or I may even make a stab at profound...ish:

A Dog is a deadly weapon, with no safety catch… and a will of its own.

All that said, Rottys are very cute.