It's Not His Job to Guard the House

‘Out’ command from people and dogs!

We start by teaching a dog how to drop and walk away from valuable items like food, bones and toys and then onto learning how to generalize that concept to walking away from the personal space of adults, kids, other dogs, other animals, etc. Many protection/guarding style breeds, such as Rottweilers, have the potential for some genetically driven tendencies to ‘protect’ and to ‘guard’ and when these tendencies aren’t tightly controlled, they can develop and manifest in a lot of awful and unpredictable ways. Dogs who are predisposed to guarding might manifest this dangerous behaviour by guarding their food bowl or their water bowl, some may guard their toys or a high value chew bone, while others may guard the home or the furniture or the vehicle and very often dogs with these tendencies feel inclined to guard their families (the humans, other pets, including their personal space). We DON’T want our pet dogs developing these tendencies for guarding and pet dogs should NEVER be used nor encouraged as a guard dog because that are simply not up to that task in any responsible way...that’s what a home security system and the police are for!! Seriously!! Actual protection and guard dogs are specificly bred for that role, live their lives as working animals and NOT pets, and they undergo years of intense training and testing with a top notch protection dog handlers in order to do that job correctly. So when we have these types of breeds with potential guarding tendencies in pet dog homes, we need to be very clear with the dog that it’s never their job to guard anything or anyone and we can help our furry friends walk an honest and riotous path by giving them strong consistent leadership, lots of structure, and a great understanding of the rules, boundaries and the commands that will keep them and everyone else safe!