Quote Originally Posted by reno316 View Post
This brings up a great point about dogs.

Lots of folks think that their dog will suddenly turn into Protecto-Hound when danger rears.

Most of these folks are wrong.

Dogs, like humans, will, when threatened with danger, resort to their training.
With dogs it is about training and instinct. I used to train Shutzhund (for the uninitiated that is the training that military and police dogs get) and a properly trained dog knoes when it should be in family mode, and then can flip a switch to protection mode when needed. Shepherds, Rotties, Dobermans generally do not need much training to encourage this instinct, if they are descendant from good working stock. They know if someone belongs or not and are excellent judges of character. I can recount many stories from my childhood, before I started training working dogs of Shepherd's we had that had no training that knew something was not right and protected the family with a single-minded purpose. Not to say that they are a catch all. A determined intruder can find a way around any obsticle you put in his way, bit generally if you have a pack of big naturally aggressive dogs they will go to easier pickings. BTW I had a buddy that in his youth was a criminal, did a lot of burglaries. He said the same thing about giving my dogs a steak. So, I challenged him to do it when I was not there. He said that he nearly was eaten by my boys.