Protective or fearful?

[jocoyn]

Codmaster - I did not say a dog with any agression is not right in the head but a dog that percieves danger when there is none does have a problem and that a dog that is downright agressive is not right in the head. Maybe you are right there. Some guardian dogs ARE downright agressive by nature. The GSD is not supposed to be.

Most fearful dogs will back down. Some dogs are downright agressive and will not. And you are right it is difficult to tell the difference but I still think the vast majority are the former. I try to just slide by and be prepared to fight back.

[hunterisgreat]

Just my opinions...

The vast majority of the time when a dog barks or growls at someone and it hasn't been specifically trained for it is fear-based. A dog with its tail held high is being dominate (which is a form of fear in the sense he's trying to establish that he's bigger and badder than the other dog). Fear doesn't have to mean the dog is tucked tail and peeing itself.

Fear isn't always a bad thing either. When training a PPD or police K9 you need to train with a controlled element of fear... for the dog to exhibit some defensive drive and get out of prey drive. otherwise you can never know how the dog will react when he's fearing for himself/his handler.

[hunterisgreat]

Originally Posted by jocoyn

Codmaster - I did not say a dog with any agression is not right in the head but a dog that percieves danger when there is none does have a problem and that a dog that is downright agressive is not right in the head. Maybe you are right there. Some guardian dogs ARE downright agressive by nature. The GSD is not supposed to be.

Most fearful dogs will back down. Some dogs are downright agressive and will not. And you are right it is difficult to tell the difference but I still think the vast majority are the former. I try to just slide by and be prepared to fight back.

Guardian dogs that are just down right aggressive by nature, I think, is someone taking a short cut to an actual guard dog. A dog like that could not be a PPD or street dog... too much liability.

[codmaster]

Originally Posted by jocoyn

Codmaster - I did not say a dog with any agression is not right in the head but a dog that percieves danger when there is none does have a problem and that a dog that is downright agressive is not right in the head. Maybe you are right there. Some guardian dogs ARE downright agressive by nature. The GSD is not supposed to be.

Most fearful dogs will back down. Some dogs are downright agressive and will not. And you are right it is difficult to tell the difference but I still think the vast majority are the former. I try to just slide by and be prepared to fight back.

Just out of my own curiosity - which "Guardian" dog breeds are "supposed to be agressive"? By that I assume you mean people agressive, not dog agressive, right?

[LaRen616]

Sinister showed that he would protect me.

When Sinister was 16 months old I took him for a walk at night. After our walk we were in my driveway about to go inside, when my neighbor calls us over to talk to him. So I am standing there talking to him and these 2 crackheads come walking down the alley, they got really close to us, one of them started to ask if Sin was friendly and was walking up to us before I could even answer him (I was about to say no he is not friendly, I dont need random strangers knowing he is friendly in my neighborhood), Sin starts growling, then he starts barking, this wasn't his normal bark, it was alot of barks and they were fast, spit starts coming out of his mouth and his hair went up, he's showing his teeth, he was trying to pull me and is lunging at them (they were not close enough to get bit) I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Sinister is extremely friendly, he loves everyone, even strangers. The crackheads were stunned, I yelled at them several times to keep moving. Finally they get far enough away and Sin stopped barking. That was the only time he ever acted that way. He knew they were bad people. My neighbor even made the comment that Sinister could tell they were not "friends".

[codmaster]

Originally Posted by hunterisgreat

Just my opinions...

The vast majority of the time when a dog barks or growls at someone and it hasn't been specifically trained for it is fear-based. A dog with its tail held high is being dominate (which is a form of fear in the sense he's trying to establish that he's bigger and badder than the other dog). Fear doesn't have to mean the dog is tucked tail and peeing itself..............

Just out of curiosity - where did you get this idea that a dog barks or growls out of fear almost all the time. What about all the times that a dog barks out of pure excitment or a simple alert action? Absolutely no fear involved there!

And now even a dominant dog is acting out of fear?

Fear of what?

[Scleropages]

So, I would say that my pup is extremely well socialized. He goes into the dog store, to the park/dog park, over to my friends' houses and plays with guests at my house (often a dozen at a time) and never barks and is always sweet. The other day I was outside and a homeless guy selling magazine subscriptions was walking door to door, through the yards. K2 sat quietly and stared at the guy. I was apprehensive because I hate talking to salesmen and I don't like people walking into my yard. K2 remained silent until the guy got within about 5 feet and he lunged and made his "big boy bark" while snapping at the guy. I pulled him back and took him inside, so everything was alright, but you're telling me that his reaction was fear?

Now, when we define fear, what do we mean here? Are we saying that as soon as the person retaliates, a dog acting out of fear will disengage? If someone grabs my wife in public I will react out of fear for her safety, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop pounding their brains out if they hit back. I understand the value of training, but I don't see how a dog that identifies something to attack will just go from fight to flight because it receives some peripheral pain.

[gsdraven]

Originally Posted by Scleropages

The other day I was outside and a homeless guy selling magazine subscriptions was walking door to door, through the yards. K2 sat quietly and stared at the guy. I was apprehensive because I hate talking to salesmen and I don't like people walking into my yard. K2 remained silent until the guy got within about 5 feet and he lunged and made his "big boy bark" while snapping at the guy. I pulled him back and took him inside, so everything was alright, but you're telling me that his reaction was fear?

Originally Posted by gsdraven

There's more to it than this but very simplified:

A fearful dog is reacting to a non threatening situation or thing.

A protective dog reacts to an actual threat. (this can include a perceived threat by you if you are actually scared).

Without seeing your dog in that situation, no one on a message board can say if the reaction was fear or not. How old is your dog?

You can see by the two sections that I bolded, that IMO it is possible that your dog felt you needed protection because you were feeding to him that you were scared about the man approaching.

For the most part, your dog did what a confident dog should do, keep a calm and watchful eye until provoked.

Personally, I don't want my dogs to go off on people that aren't actually threatening so I work on my own confidence so that I can be a good leader to my dog and they don't feel that need to take charge in every day situations.

[Scleropages]

Originally Posted by gsdraven

Without seeing your dog in that situation, no one on a message board can say if the reaction was fear or not. How old is your dog?

You can see by the two sections that I bolded, that IMO it is possible that your dog felt you needed protection because you were feeding to him that you were scared about the man approaching.

For the most part, your dog did what a confident dog should do, keep a calm and watchful eye until provoked.

Personally, I don't want my dogs to go off on people that aren't actually threatening so I work on my own confidence so that I can be a good leader to my dog and they don't feel that need to take charge in every day situations.

K2 is about 5 months old. Maybe apprehensive was the wrong word. I was on my guard in case the guy was hostile or anything.

[LaRen616]

Being that the puppy is only 5 months old, I would think that he was having a fear reaction.