My little story. You tell me what you think.

[Ryder]

Yup, have to love those built in early warning systems dogs have. Mine smells people passing the house in the middle of the night and lets loose a single WOOF that rattles the windows and really gets my adrenaline flowing

Good job justatexasboy, no criticisms here, everyone stayed safe.

 

[silverlance]

good job

everyone went home with no extra holes and the dogs are loyal to the family. ok, sounds good.

I would say however that NO DOG is ever completely safe to have around kids. Having the dogs be part of the family is one thing, have them substitue for mom/dad/baby sitter/playmate is quite another.

My dog's "playful nip" nearly took my right ear off once in a rough game of toss and tumble.

 

[english kanigit]

Could you expound a little bit on how your pits are trained? This intrigues me greatly....

ek

 

[justatexasboy]

english kanigit,

I hope this helps and it isnt too long winded. I love dogs and can talk dogs for hours.


For the most part my pits are family first dogs. They are our pets and friends. They are naturaly very protective as a breed. Frankly they are big attention seeking clowns.

1st. My pits came from actual working lines (hog hunters) they are not the totally buff looking over bred show pits that I so often see. They dont come from the smaller dog fighting lines either. They are actually very wirey, lean and athletic, mine have been bred with a large torsos for big lungs and long enough legs to run down thier game. By show standards they are probably ugly. I have found that working lines are way more stable and predictable if they get the proper attention and excercise. I was raised with pits in the house as was my father, I dont think anyone of us has ever had a papered pit.

2nd I excercise my dogs alot.

3rd I put them through all the basic trianing commands(sit,heal,come,down,crawl, and roll over). I still practice these basic commands daily on and off leash. My 11 year old boy, 9 year old daughter, and wife also practice the basics with me and can control my dogs on and off leash, even with distractions like other dogs around.

4rth I did very light sleeve work with them. Just enough to build up a little confidence and to insure that they would break when instructed to. My bitch did not get any stick work, she is much harder than my male and I dont feel she needed the confidence building like my male did. My male got very light stick work, just enough to insure he would hold and not break until instructed to.

Just to be clear. The sleeve work I did was mainly to insure proper control of them if they ever did have to defend us. I wanted to be sure that we could get them to break. When I say we I do mean we. My kids can get the dogs to break also. Even my harder bitch listens to them while in the fray.

5th Fence and window work. This was the funnest part of training my dogs. It is a blast. It is pure positive reinforcement. But you need a willing acomplice.

How to do it.

Get the family to settle into its regular schedule in the evening with the dogs in the family room with you. Get a friend to rattle the bushes outside a window. When the dogs react and go to the window to investigate raise the dogs stress level by whispering "watch him and what is it". Have your friend run off and then praise your dog.

The window and fence work I did was simply getting the dog to react, until the intruder ran away. Then slowly raising the amount of agitation the dog would have to display before the intruder made his retreat. It was always followed be heavy praise for the dogs.

Before you know it your friend will be to the point of slowly opening the window while your dog is snarling barking and doing his best godzilla impersination.

One thing I was particularly worried about was my dogs going through a broken window and chasing the intruder down. It was expensive but I had my friend break the windows several times to teach the dogs to stay in the home. I am very confident that they wont pursue now. This is of particular importance if a kiddo breaks a window by accident while we are not home.... The dogs must be taught not to pursue if window trained.


With strong breeds dominance is everything. But dominance is a subtle thing. It is not abuse. Dogs will test thier dominance by entering rooms first, not yeilding the right of way to a human. This are things that the alpha leader must identify and correct to maintain a solid alpha position. My kids have been taught these things and enforce them subtly too alomst as a second nature now. I would encourage lots of training for a human before trying to take on the alpha position in a strong breed.


Another thing. And this is just my personal view about it and probably a bit overboard. Someone here said something about wrestling with thier dogs playfully. My dogs dont play wrestle and never have. We play tug or war a little with toys but never wrestle. Watch a bitch with her puppies. She dosnt permit this behavior and quickly snaps at her puppies when they attempt it. It is a very bad learned behavior in a strong breed and quite frankly a direct invitation to challenge your alpha position. If me, my kids, my wife or my kids friends try to pay wrestle with my dogs they submit When I say submit I mean they roll over and show off thier bellies in hopes of getting a good rub. Period. Any show of agression towards any family member is not permited. Play to a dog is a complicated thing, it is not just play, it is how they learn and another means of establishing thier dominance in the pack. I know this is probably overboard but it is what I expect out of my dogs around my family they are part of the pack but very low in the pecking order. I know this whole dominance thing sounds cruel, but if its done subtly and with utter confidence it works, its the pack mentality and how dogs really think. I have never spanked my dogs. And I have never had one of my dogs challenge my or a members position in the pack more than subtly.

 

[Steel Talon]

Hello just...

Assess this situation, identify what you learned from it and implement the needed changes

You handle that situation. Wife safe, baby safe, you safe. Plus some guy was allowed to return to his family.

Your a man among true men

Peace
Steel Talon

 

[Creeping Incrementalism]

Afterwards, I found out that the guy had a 6" utility type knife in his back pocket. He had been working on a local sho sealing the floors and had been overcome by the fumes

What is "a local sho"? And what kind of sealent has fumes that make someone go berserk and want to break into houses at random? I know various chemical fumes can make people high, but I have trouble seeing how it would lead to this.

 

[nuit5]

Good Dogs!

justatexasboy, sounds like the situation turned out the best way it could. BTW, awesome work with your dogs! I have a Boxer and she's my early warning system, though I didn't work with her much on it. She has woken me up several nights, standing on the bed over me (she doesn't sleep on my bed), growling towards the bedroom door. Turns out there were people from a party in the apartment next door standing outside our front door chatting around 3 am. The 1st time she did that, it scared the crap out me. I thought I was done for. She was a pound rescue and it happened the 1st week I got her, so I wasn't sure what she was doing. It took a minute for me to hear what she was hearing. haha..Now I know what's going on when I wake up with her on the bed, standing over me.

 

[TimboKhan]

It's easy to make a mistake when sleepy. I posted a response quite some time ago in which I told the story of how I very nearly shot my roommate. I don't think my response was unjustified, but still... By the way, I will freely admit that I have a bias against Pit Bulls. I do not, however, have a bias against Rottweilers. The best dog I ever owned was a 100lb Rottweiler mix that was the nicest, sweetest dog in the world under normal circumstances, but a flat out mean bastard if he felt that I was being threatened. He once bit a homeless guy square on the bum when I was walking him in downtown Denver at about 2 in the morning. The guy sort of lunged out at me from behind a dumpster, and good ol' Jake didn't like that, so he chomped him but good. I figured the guy got his just desserts, so I just kept on keeping on. About 15 minutes later, we came across another homeless guy that Jake knew somehow, and ol' Jake just walked right up to get petted. Interestingly, my neighborhood was actually pretty serene despite the fact that I lived a block from the capitol (16th and Grant for those in the know), and my schedule at the time meant that I had to walk him at night most of the time. I lived near a homeless shelter called "Shelter for the Workingman" or something along those lines, and those guys would frequently come out en masse to play with Jake, which was fine with me. I also frequently encountered street guys. Most were OK, and a few were really nice guys. Drunks, but nice. There were three in particular that were always hanging out together that I called "The Three Wisemen" that used to just love when I would walk Jake. They always produced treats for him, and it just made them happy that my big ol' dog would walk up to them and do tricks and stuff for them, and they REALLY liked it when a squirrel was around, because he would stalk it. Sadly, one of the three wiseman died one cold night because he was too drunk to get somewhere warm. I will always remember how happy my boy made those guys. Sadly for me, I was going through a very, very, very tough period in my own life at the time, and circumstances led to me having to take Jake back to the shelter that I got him at (and in fact worked at. I got him when I worked there, and I took him back after I had moved on) and he was put to sleep. I adopted him when he was about seven years old, and I had to give him back when he was eight. I am not ashamed to admit that I am actually crying as I write this, because he was a good dog, a great buddy and was literally the only bright spot I had in 2000. That was a bad, bad year man....

 

[Biker]

That's a sad story, Timbokhan. At least Ol' Jake had a good friend and a home for a year.

Biker

 

[justatexasboy]

Creeping Incrementalism,

LOL! My spelling is horrible, but my typing is worse. The sho is actually a shop. The cops told me that he was using a pretty nasty industrial tile sealer to seal the floors of a shop near my house. They were preparing it to become a kitchen floor if that helps, but I have no clue what he was actually using. I cant imagine getting that out of control either. But then I dont even drink.