[QUOTE=sisu27;8905965]
Most Doberman possess good judgement naturally in this regard. I have owned enough of them that I think I can make that statement. They are the only breed created 100% for personal protection and have been bred for it. North American dogs are getting further away from “correct” now though and some possess a more suspicious, fearful demeanor. These dogs are more likely to make poor decisions. A well trained, well bred Dobe is less likely to ever make a mistake.
I spent a day this weekend with an IPO trainer from Germany. There were many dogs there (Dobes, Rotties, Mals, GSDs and 1 Pitt). The breeds that I felt were more likely to make a mistake were the GSDs and Mals by an exponential margin. FWIW the Pitt had no drive lol…just liked to be hanging out and getting snacks. Also how is that for breed legislation working…dog was under a year old…this was in Ontario.
The Dobes and Rotties like to work for their handlers. They are all about the sleeve and making their person happy. The GSDs and Mals look like they have other things in mind. In fact the person they trained with warned the IPO guy with a few that they were “dirty”. Meaning they would bite outside of the sleeve.
The difference between those 2 types was huge. 1 group was working for their handler and the other was an effort to be controlled by their handler. The motivation looked very different.[/QUOTE]
This is interesting.
I’ve been training with an IPO club for the last couple of months. My dog (a Malinois) is just a baby, so he isn’t on the sleeve yet - we do mostly obedience, some baby tracking, and he gets to tug with and bark at the helper.
My club is probably 95% GSDs. I have the only Mal, and there are two Rotties. Of the GSDs, there is a lot of variation - some DDR, some West German Working Lines, one Czech, and even a couple of West German Show Lines.
The reason I quoted your post, sisu27, is that you said you felt like the GSDs and the Mals “look like they have other things in mind” when doing the bite work. True, some dogs are going to be more “civil”, as they say - have more defense drive and be more willing to actually bite a human - but it certainly isn’t a breed trait.
In our club, there are probably three dogs I would say would bite for real - one DDR, the Czech, and a retired police dog that belongs to the Training Director. None of them are dirty on the sleeve and none of them have a bad temperament - they just have more defense drive and would actually do real protection/patrol work. The rest, including my Mal, are just in it for the game. Whether or not that is desirable is questionable and up to the individual handler. Me? I’m just happy my dog is having fun. He’ll probably never work in defense, but he’s got prey drive for days.
As far as police dogs go, this is actually a conversation that is had a lot at my club, since our TD sees a lot of the local K9s. The problem with police dogs is 1. They are often handled by guys who don’t really speak “dog”. They’ve had a 6 week training course, and that’s it for education. And 2. The police departments either don’t know enough to select a good dog with balanced drives, or can’t afford it.
A green dog will run anywhere from $3k - $10k. Most police department budgets are in the low end of that range, which mostly means they aren’t getting the dogs with balanced drives and good temperaments. Those dogs mostly end up in sport homes or with the Israeli Army. The dogs most police departments can afford are dogs that would be washed out of an IPO home for a bad temperament.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t good K9s out there, because there absolutely are. But it is becoming a big issue in protection circles that there are more and more K9s with bad temperaments out on the streets. Not an ideal situation, but it isn’t the dogs’ fault - it’s the fault of the humans that are breeding, selecting, and training poorly balanced dogs.
