found this on ped data base

Concerns from New Owner by yena on 09 April 2009 - 16:04

yena Posts: 1 Joined: Thu Apr 09, 2009 02:06 pm

My wife and I want to retain Ivan Balabanov to train a German Shepherd or Belgian Malinois protection dog, but have some concerns we would like other trainers' opinions upon. We are sending these same questions to Ivan of course, but seek independent corroboration. We want a protection dog because I travel extensively 4-6 times a year for my business, and we are about to start having children, so we want to add another layer of security and companionship for our new family. We do not have the time to participate in shows; a practical working dog is our main objective. What kind of training should we the dog owners go through? We currently have a 14-year old cat, and while she is sweet, adoring and not obnoxious (for example, if she begs for food, we have trained her to sit by the side of the table, and wait without making any noise), I believe that doesn't at all prepare us properly to maintain the training of a protection dog. I don't know anything about animal behavior or conditioning. We've read the Monks of New Skete books, but have not had a dog. Should we go somewhere to learn what we need to know to properly maintain the training and avoid picking up bad conditioning habits on a daily basis? These dogs aren't machines, so what do I need to know about how they think and feel to best communicate with them? How does a dog recognize an attacker? Looking at the bottom two "Real life protection training scenarios" videos in Balabanov's media web page, we are concerned that in these scenarios it seems the dog was protecting the handler upon its own initiative with no command from the handler. Wouldn't that be a problem for friends who rough house with our children, for example? Or what if a friend of ours gave one of us a really vigorous bear hug? What do we need to know about protection dogs around children? Our policy is until they are school age (first grade), children must be around at least one parent at all times. However, we still have concerns even during the first through third grades. Not about our children as much as our children's friends. We'll carefully screen their friends of course, and weed out any that we think might not be stable enough to be trusted around a pet alone or with our children, but this is a concern we have regarding any pet around children. What have you done on this issue? Our current thought is until our children demonstrate they can quick march with the pet straight back to us if any unacceptable behavior is displayed by a playmate, pets stay with one of us at all times when their friends are visiting. Can these kinds of active dogs live aboard a boat? We plan on having our own 60-foot catamaran in 7-8 years, and will occasionally make runs of 1-3 weeks on open ocean. How feasible is it to train a dog of this size to use a treadmill to "run" with one of us on another treadmill? They have high energy levels so I don't want to discourage that, but would they find such a regime intolerable? How difficult is it to train a dog to "clear" a house (or boat)? One of my concerns is my wife and children stumbling upon burglars while I'm out of town. My wife can handle her own, but it becomes much dicier with two toddlers in tow. So is the kind of clearing I saw in the videos feasible, or is that more a rare skill? Within the next 4 years we anticipate living in a non-US location where firearms are not permitted, and while we currently live a low-profile lifestyle, simply being an expatriate abroad in this location is sometimes enough to attract unwanted attention. We will rely upon an alarm system as our primary security but a having the dog trained to do this (if feasible) would be a great comfort. How do these dogs react to people who are afraid of

:thinking: :thinking: :thinking:

lmao off at jlb82's reply tho a fully trained dog that knows wen to bite and wen not to bite is safer then hs so called dogs that are not and chances are if this persons dogs were actually challanged they would run a mile as i train PPD so have met their kind lmao


JLB82@ reply lol-
Dogs are pretty protective on there own usally, i believe. Protection
Dogs that are trained to protect can be a real libility, especially if
you have children. You have to remember that these k-9's are not
robots they are animals and they can be very unpridictable. ON top of
that, not any dog can be "trained" for a protection dog. They have to
be aggressive, real aggressive. People breed them based on how
agressive they are to ensure the dog will do what they need them to do.
Just google up all the retired police k-9 dogs, who retire and go to
homes to be a family dog, you'll find numrous stories of children and
elderly, who were chewed up by these same dogs. I've owned Germand
shepherds for years and they were always protective for us, and my
children and home. They were nothing special like your what
your talking about, but you could get them to sick, heck even my
maltese wil sickem. My german shepherds, will protect us from other
animals too! No body messes with us with our dogs around. But they are
not mean or trained . They just love us. They usally jump on the
trampoline with the kids, or go on a walk with the family, or fetch a
ball for my one year old, or sleeping below one of the kids beds, I
have four kids age ranging 1-8 and i have four dogs ages 1-4 ,each one
of my children have a german shepherd laying right next to their beds
at night, we sleep very well.

They need to be real aggressive? :thinking:

This is all bollox and none of these people should ever have a dog IMO :san54:

i know right lol kiera is the sweetest dog i have ever known and is higher drive and extreme compared to any PPD they tend to be more in the middle lol this guy hasnt a clue one day he may wake up to his kids having been eaten by his dogs that "Nobody messes with" LMAO

Fazza if they are thinking of having kids i would not want a PPD in the house.
As he says he is away afew times the wife and the kids would be left alone and buy the sounds of the questions hes asking, he dosent have much knowledge of dogs,is he expecting the wife to control the dog when hes away while looking after young kids. If he wants to go down this route why not hire a handler and dog ?
think he should stick with the cat

I've just searched this and can find nothing on ex police dogs attacking.

Even if there were any stories, compared to the ones who happily live out the rest of their days without incident and also wouldnt have stories on the net about this fact, whats the betting that they would be in the distinct minority and were ill/old/in the wrong environment anyway?

Going back to Kenny's post, in all of their "research" have they not read at least one article on the dangers of leaving kids unsupervised with dogs? It doesnt matter how well behaved a dog is, kids are evil and need supervising. Also, illness in a dog need taking into account, dog in pain etc. Its not fair to put a dog in that situation, no matter how well trained it is, something could go wrong, caused solely by a child not understanding how to treat a dog fully or just being a pain in the arse and hurting it on purpose as it "wont do anything anyway".

we have homed PPD with familys fine its all about being responsable altho would never leave the two alone but same if it wasnt a ppd

i agree sounds like he hasnt a clue and should stay well clear no dought ivan will tell him what he needs to know but i have to say a dog trained to bite is no liability if respected as it should be i can play fight have the kids *cousins ect* playfighting running round our house and kirea doesnt so much as look at them and shes a lot more extreme then a PPD shes been poked prodded and stood on by them and doesnt flinch as she knows wen to switch it on and wen to switch it off, that is the key with dogs like this

Rostam well hes just f**king evil and i wouldnt allow him near kids EVER lol

This is the problem I have with "ready trained dogs" Kenny. People who shouldnt have a dog as they have no clue being able to handle that is a disaster waiting to happen.

lmao cross posted i agree paula the dog is a animal at end of the day but i think its also extreme to say they are just aggressive and a untrained dog *that ppl would never mess with* are safe

as we say some f**k witts out there :san42: :san42: :san42:

I would prefer a trained PPD over an unpredictable, untrained dog any day

exactly any dog has it in them to be aggressive but IMO and from what i have seen ect its the ones trained *fully* wen and how to bite that are less likely to do so as they look to thier handler ect or training to know wen the untrained dog ect will do so out of fear and will just simply react

ppl used to say to us wen patrolling how we get our dogs to spark up with out speaking and one of the triggers for them is for us to take up the lead tighter and they know that means to "watch em" and we dont have to say a word obviously they also so a lot of senario training so it gets drilled in

i Know what u mean Paula its just when u look at the data base u always get these kind of posts, people asking for protection dogs with apparently no knowledge of what they are actually asking for