Just curious.
How do you tell the difference between a dog being protective and a dog being fearful?
How do you tell the difference between a dog being protective and a dog being fearful?
martemchik, can you elaborate on how a fear reaction is a good reaction?I think what people aren't realizing is that fear can be a good reaction. A fearful GSD will scare away an intruder or a threat, it just won't know how to seperate the difference between friend and foe. This discussion also makes it sound a little bit like the GSD is a sissy when it reacts out of fear not protective nature. Which isn't the case at all, but I know I would feel that way.
I think a post at the beginning covered it well, a fearful dog is unpredictable, you don't know if it will back down or stand up and fight. If it fights and injures a person you have a liability on your hands, if it runs away, well you might not have the guard dog you were always hoping for.
Or a fearful dog will go and hide behind the sofa.It's hard to explain, but I was thinking along the lines of a break in or an intruder in your home. A fearful dog might scare them away by barking and freaking out.
I feel like you're talking about me here.A GSD should not be a weapon, a gun is....that is the point of my post.
The dog will alert you to get your weapon, and if you are a shaky nervebag, then no, you should not have that weapon, maybe mace would be better?
This was a great article, it explained so many things that I had little to no clue about...This article has been around the block more than a few times
If I only read one thing about dogs it would be THIS one
It is on many many sites and I only picked this site because it has it as a handy PDF file
http://www.vanerp.net/ilse/GSDINFO/E...emperament.pdf
Good question! Dogs will sometimes do really dumb things if they don't have any natural caution; but we humans don't seem to want a lot of natural caution in our GSDs. We want them to face a threat with no fear, caution, or tenativeness... of course, sport is highly ritualized and the dogs are trained to the point where they know they won't get hurt. But Police dogs may very well be hurt or killed in the line of duty.Is it courage or lack of intelligence to run right up to it and sniff it?