Your Alpha attack dog is VERY likely to treat you well. After all, you’re helpful, nice to it, non threatening and you’re in need of it’s protection. But you don’t actually control it. You might THINK you do, but can you trim its nails? Can you clean it’s ears? Could you take the dogfood bowl away from it while it’s eating? Does the dog ever growl at you when you push it around on the bed or try to push it OFF the bed? If it was running down a cat, would just your voice stop it?
Some, rare people have Alpha status over their German Attack Breed, and they are thusly domesticated “pets” but most do not.
People think I don’t like German Attack Dogs. For their intended purpose I like them very much. And in the past there were one or two that were well behaved and controlled by the owner. I don’t “generally” dislike them on principal. I’d have one, but I’d have to really “own” it, heart mind and soul. I would need to be it’s boss and not the other way around.
If you didn’t spank or physically correct your kids when they were young because it was barbaric or raising your kids through fear, you are not going to be successful with a German Attack Breed. You need the dog to respect you and in times when obedience is crucial, you can’t put them in the car and take them to therapy or ‘have a heart to heart’.
Unfortunately, people these days are increasingly “soft” due to parent-shaming and non-parents giving advice from a position of philosophy and not experience – online – but for these breeds, LEADERSHIP is key. Without owners that understand that they have to lead these breeds, be dominant to these specimens, I can’t keep seeing them. So this year I called a moratorium on the attack breeds. I won’t start a new case with one. I’m not firing my existing clients with attack breeds. These, we have “figured out” how to arrange their visits so that people in the waiting room and other dogs don’t get hurt. Not the kind of thing you worry about with Golden Retrievers. Hahahaha.
I suppose I’d consider a show dog. Those are trained to permit easy handling by a championship judge. The breeder/handler owner is Alpha to the Show Dog. But that’s vanishingly rare in our town.
