Interested in your experience.
I’d be interested in any answers, too. I have thought of it a few times as something I might do eventually - woman living alone in very remote area.
There are quite a few questions you need to ask yourself before venturing out and deciding whether or not you want or need a PPD. Owning a PPD is a huge requirement both financially and time-wise. Some basic questions to ask yourself before beginning your research into the want/need for a PPD are as follows (and based solely on my opinion and experience with working dogs and PPD:)
What kind of “Personal Protection” dog are you looking for?
Do you know what breed?
By “Personal Protection” do you mean a dog that will aggressively alert you of someone on the property? A dog that will attack on command? A dog that will attack if you are threatened?
Do you know what your homeowner’s insurance says about a personal protection dog / a dog trained to bite on command?
Do you know what your local ordinances are (county and/or city) for personal protection dogs, liability, and housing requirements?
Do you have experience in any of the large working breeds such as Rottweilers, Cane Corso, German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, or Dobermans?
Are you willing to go through refresher training every year for handling of your dog?
Are you willing to pay upwards of $15,000 - $50,000 for a trained PPD? And another potential $$$$ per year for refresher training?
Didn’t go out to buy one but the boxer mix I adopted has become one. She thinks it is her job to protect me. Had to post Beware of Dog Signs. She OK if she senses I’m comfortable but I have to watch her if she senses some thing is amiss. No one gets out of their cars until I tell her it’s OK. Don’t know if this will work. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1420013985120&set=a.1416053806118.2060570.1375790007&type=3&theater. She’s the one on the right.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1420013985120&l=e70f3bbbf0. This should work.
[QUOTE=HydroPHILE;6285267]
There are quite a few questions you need to ask yourself before venturing out and deciding whether or not you want or need a PPD. Owning a PPD is a huge requirement both financially and time-wise. Some basic questions to ask yourself before beginning your research into the want/need for a PPD are as follows (and based solely on my opinion and experience with working dogs and PPD:)
What kind of “Personal Protection” dog are you looking for?
Do you know what breed?
By “Personal Protection” do you mean a dog that will aggressively alert you of someone on the property? A dog that will attack on command? A dog that will attack if you are threatened?
Do you know what your homeowner’s insurance says about a personal protection dog / a dog trained to bite on command?
Do you know what your local ordinances are (county and/or city) for personal protection dogs, liability, and housing requirements?
Do you have experience in any of the large working breeds such as Rottweilers, Cane Corso, German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, or Dobermans?
Are you willing to go through refresher training every year for handling of your dog?
Are you willing to pay upwards of $15,000 - $50,000 for a trained PPD? And another potential $$$$ per year for refresher training?[/QUOTE]
Adding, are you willing to live with the consequences of your PPD trained dog misunderstanding a situation and hurting someone and the liability you will incur anyway, if the dog is really “saving” you, or only thinking it is doing so?
I started training dogs in obedience 40 years ago with a breeder and trainer of GSD for the sheriff and police department.
I helped with the man work at times.
I would not want to have one of those dogs to manage, unless I was an officer and it was my job.
Most any larger working dog will step in and protect you from a stranger.
Our dobies would walk between anyone looking suspicious and I think would have definitely been an asset if someone had tried to attack AND would still listened if we had told them to stop.
That is just the way working dogs are, they don’t need training for that.
The PPD training is to learn to do so on command and have control to call them off.
Why don’t you find a local shutzhund club and watch them train?
See if you would like to have one similar dog and do the training it will require from you to keep the dog working properly.
It may appeal to you, it does many dog trainers.:yes:
A PPD is very expensive and it’s very easy to get ripped off. The government gets a lot of K9 dogs for Federal Agencies through various trainers/breeders that also sell their stock as PPD who vary in quality from complete scam to the genuine article so you need to do a lot of research before you consider investing as the prices are not budget friendly.
Buying a PPD dog is kind of like buying guns- without extensive training in how to care for and use one, they are not very useful and extremely dangerous to yourself and others to have around.
[QUOTE=maybedog;6285327]
Didn’t go out to buy one but the boxer mix I adopted has become one. She thinks it is her job to protect me. Had to post Beware of Dog Signs. She OK if she senses I’m comfortable but I have to watch her if she senses some thing is amiss. No one gets out of their cars until I tell her it’s OK. Don’t know if this will work. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1420013985120&set=a.1416053806118.2060570.1375790007&type=3&theater. She’s the one on the right.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1420013985120&l=e70f3bbbf0. This should work.[/QUOTE]
“Boxer Mix” is code for “pit bull mix but we don’t want to say pit bull”… Given her behavior I’d think more pit than boxer but certainly keep calling her a boxer mix so she doesn’t get the stigma. Maybe you saw the boxer parent and yours really is but I always laugh at how many “boxer mixes” there are in shelters…
I have two Blackmouth Curs that are very protective, especially like was said here, if I am uneasy. One of them is virtually a lie detector-no matter how nicely and politely I speak to a person that I don’t like she can tell I really don’t like talking to him him and will stand in the corner and watch him like a bodyguard.
and I have a Great Pyrenees that I have no doubt would take out anyone that scared me.
I don’t need a dog to do my dirty work-in a worst case scenario I would appreciate them buying me some time and/or running some interference.
In my experience, I would only purchase a PPD if I felt as though my life was in danger, and I didn’t have easy access to a firearm. Otherwise, a big, loud, and protective dog does the trick just as well.
We trained our German Shepherd to bark on command to the extent that a simple hand signal or whispered word, and he will bark loudly and ferociously at a person. Without any training, he can pick up on people acting suspiciously and will watch them. If they won’t make eye contact, slouch down, put hands in pockets, etc. he will STOP and watch them. (In the picture, he is only a year old.)
A good trainer can take any dog with a natural protective instinct and train it to bark on command (aggressively as in a bark-and-hold) or to pick up on body language of humans.
As Bluey said, can you live with the consequences (and lawsuit) if your PPD thinks you’re being threatened and seriously hurts someone? I think of a PPD as a living, breathing, can think-for-themselves weapon (that is…the ones that have been trained to attack on command or attack if there is a threat versus ones sold as PPDs that merely look and sound mean.)
maybedog: Your dog looks like a Lab/Boxer mix…not a pit bull mix 
(Not that there’s anything wrong with pitties, but they’re not known as a protection/guardian breed.)
Zactly!!! We trained our GSD the exact same thing. Ours is a whispered “Watch him Grizz” and he will explode with barking, hackles and flashing white teeth! We did it for the daughter’s sake mostly…It’s a VERY nice button to install 
I just have a large, loud Dobie…works very nicely for me as most people see Zeus and will go the other way (unless of course, they are invited guests).
[QUOTE=kasjordan;6285599]
Zactly!!! We trained our GSD the exact same thing. Ours is a whispered “Watch him Grizz” and he will explode with barking, hackles and flashing white teeth! We did it for the daughter’s sake mostly…It’s a VERY nice button to install ;-)[/QUOTE]
I had to giggle because I did the exact same thing with my GSDx. She had this huge ferocious bark, even as a puppy, so I taught her hand signals to bark on command. It’s pretty terrifying if you don’t know her.
One day I had her in the cab of the truck with me and I got out to put gas in. Some guy started toward me to ask a question and I was stunned by the ferociousness my dog (Princess Penelope is her pet name…lol, actually Princess Penelope Peanuthead) hit the window with. If she could have gotten out, I think she would have eaten that guy alive. She has never been aggressive in the truck or with people approaching it, but someone approaching me outside the truck is apparently not ok in her books.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-GoleQwpzRY0/TnoOCCG8ytI/AAAAAAAAAeg/qv9ZiaIEQEU/s847/DSC_0058.JPG
There are many “organizations” who do this. I don’t know which are legit and which are not. Perhaps someone here has done this: adopt a military dog.
An example: http://www.militaryworkingdogs.com/dogstoadopt.shtml
It’s been a while since I heard anything about that, but I heard sometime back that those dogs (assuming they are the real deal and not the cop school dropouts) have an incredible high drive.
For most people that is really not a good thing.
It is absolutely important for the job they were bred to do, but not for the average household.
Unless I was in a line of work where I needed that type of vigilance and protection, I’d stick with an average large breed animal with according Obedience training. That should be plenty for the average person. Most dogs assume the guardian role anyhow.
I had a Dalmatian who would have torn your arm off if you dared to get to her truck or in her house.
She always had a big bark, but when our kid was born it got a really menacing undertone!
Of course, being a Dalmatian, she did not LOOK intimidating…drawback…
I’m in a working dog training group (I’m the lazy member with the lower drive dog who mainly holds the camcorder), and thought I would throw out some random observations. First, imo, a good PPD will be high drive and intelligent. I would make sure you like working a dog all the time it isn’t in the crate. Second, they have to have something extra–my friend’s Malinois is a great mondio ring dog, good solid bitework, a little nuts so obedience is harder (although he has awesome scores), very high drive, but if a big dude told him to run away he might do it–I think most dogs will back down if they are able to.
My other friend has a former PPD (GSD) that she tried to do Schutzhund and Mondio with and he is so mental he is terrible at it (you have to be able to call them off after all) so he is basically retired. She had to keep him on leash for a year in the house before he chilled out enough to be off lead (he is hyper vigilant). He is the real deal though–he would die to protect her, no doubt. He is not appropriate for 99% of the population and never around kids. He’s my only exposure to a true PPD. I’m sure there are better ones out there as far as integration goes.
My dobermans are worthless unless you are a squirrel or a bunny. I have to be honest with you. Yes, my female will do a little bit of bitework (sleeve-only, I haven’t gotten her to do legs or anything else), great obedience, but I’m pretty sure she would not save me. She would rather die than bite someone for real–the sleeve is a big toy to most ring dogs. In other words, they are biting a toy, not a person in their mind. My male won’t do any of that (rescue–he has couch potatoe level drive) but if push came to shove and he couldn’t escape he would bite someone.
That said, ANY of those dogs are enough to scare off most strangers. My dogs are the FRIENDLIEST, most under-control things ever in public (have done some formal obedience trials, CGC, etc.) and people cross the street to avoid us on the side walk simply because they must look mean I guess. [I should add there are legit working line dobes out there–mine are not–I got into the ring stuff after I acquired them].
find out if your homeowners will cover something like this. If not, look into a separate policy and be prepared to pay big time.
Personally, I would never want the liability of a PPD.
RacetrackReject - what exactly is your German Shepherd crossed with?
She’s a wolf hybrid I picked up through a rescue when I called asking if they had any large breed puppies to be a companion for my Siberian Husky. She’s perfect.
She’s beautiful, i was curious if you were going to try to pass her off as a shepherd/husky or something. How old was she when you got her? Does your insurance cover her?
Thanks! She was just a pup about 2 months old when I got her (9 yr old now I believe). I normally just say she is a GSDx because people get all freaky about hybrids. It’s not like I bred her or seeked a hybrid out. I just wanted a large breed pup for a companion to my Siberian Husky and when I called the local rescue about some different puppies that had all been adopted, they told me about the hybrid pups. They couldn’t bring the pups into the rescue because they were hybrids, so they were trying to find them homes by word of mouth.
My insurance asked what breeds of dogs I had, but they didn’t have any issues with her. I have insurance through a farm insurance company though and I think they tend to have less restrictions on things like that.
