huski

I think majority, the vast majority, of dogs would be unlikely to bite an intruder anyway. My understanding is that the Companion Animals Act permits dogs to react in these circumstances if there is provocation. ETA: Melzawelza beat me to it :) I haven't heard of any cases in Australia where an intruder has successfully sued the home owner if their dog bit them. I think it would be a hard case to justify when they were committing an illegal act. I live by myself and if someone broke into my house the last thing on my mind would be that they could sue me for allowing my dog to bite them. It makes me feel safer to have dogs but I don't have beware of the dog signs up as I don't like to advertise to the neighborhood that I have dogs, but it would be obvious to anyone who broke in, in about 0.1 seconds that dogs live here :laugh:

For anyone in NSW I just got some today from Supreme Pet Foods in Shane's Park, they stock it all the time. It is chopped up. The pet mince and bones are cheap there too :) However the tripe is the most disgusting smelling stuff ever! LOL.

TLC I would personally be using a long line if recall isn't 100% yet. I have a set criteria for recall which is I train my dog to come every time on the first command. I don't want to repeat the command and if I had a dog that ignored the recall sometimes or only complied when I repeated it I would retrain it with a new word that hasn't been 'tainted' so to speak. When I am training recall I consider a dog that doesn't come the first time as 'failing' that recall, because it doesn't meet the criteria I have set.

I have a Nissan X-Trail and I know heaps of dog people who have them too. Brilliant dog car!!

Maybe your dogs are different to the Mals we have and others we meet and work with, ours are naturally submissive (there's no mistaking it) to us when they aren't in drive. It's one of the biggest differences I would see between Mals and GSDs.

If by submissive you mean jam their heads into peoples laps and hands nudging for a pat NOW then yes lol none of mine would every roll over for anyone. I don't think I've ever seen many submissive to other dogs either unless we're talking young pup to some harder, older dogs. Malinois tend to be racists and breedists from what I've seen over the years. They warm to new things slowly, if at all. I think by far the safest thing if you meet a Malinois is follow the owners direction and always ask first. Calm and quiet in public, absolutely, but not all are teddy bears by a long shot particularly if you invade their personal space. It's a very one sided relationship ... they can invade yours, you don't invade theirs :laugh: Particularly compared to GSDs I find Mals heaps more submissive and softer to the handler. If I raised my voice it would be ears back 'oh crap, sorry Becky, *cue pathetic look*'. My bitch would roll over for a belly rub from other people. Once in drive and working though it's a different story! Lots of Mals I meet don't like strangers invading their space, they don't generally have much real value for other people but I have never met a more affectionate dog when it comes to 'their' people. Our dogs would crawl inside our skin if they could, no personal space issues with us :laugh: We don't really run our dogs with others but mine is generally submissive to dogs she knows, even my beagle, lol. A random dog that ran up to her or didn't greet her politely would be a different story.

On the bed!

Puppies go through their first fear period between 12-16 weeks. IMO the ideal age to go to a new home is around 7-8 weeks. If I had a litter I would take any unsold puppy in its fear period off the market until later in its development. That's not to say all puppies sold between 12-16 weeks grow up badly, but I would avoid it and wouldn't take a puppy of that age personally.

I've always liked people asking me about the dogs, I used to get stopped all the time with Micha and Daisy. I think only one or two people have ever asked me about Wiz though, people often thinks she looks mean. Venom however who is the exact same breed and the same lines gets a lot of attention as he's fluffy!

What else did you mean when you said it was "an understandable dog reaction"? That implies that it's ok, or appropriate behaviour. I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make with this thread/experiment. Are you trying to catch out certain DOLers for having double standards? LMSWs thread became heated for a number of reasons as threads can often do especially as this is a hot topic. IMO, in both threads the owners of the attacking dog were entirely in the wrong.

I think had the small dog startled it would have been a normal reaction, but I find it extremely worrying that anyone would think that attacking another dog is an "understandable dog reaction" in response to being politely sniffed by a dog it had been standing next to for some time. That's not a reasonable reaction, it's aggression. It is not a normal reaction to a polite greeting from another dog.

There were plenty of people blaming LMSWs in the other thread.

Even when the attacking dog was minding its own business and was approached without warning by another dog? IMO, it's not always the attacking dog who is at fault. If I've got my reactive dog on leash and under control, and someone lets their "friendly" dog run up to say hello, it's the friendly dog who is fault. And this was the case in the other thread. Big, friendly, well trained dog was allowed to approach a small, fearful dog. And yet it's the small dog's fault? Doesn't make sense. LMSWs dog did not "run up to say hello" to the small dog, it is all there on video and clear as day that isn't what happened, I don't understand why you keep trying to invent something that did not happen. If this was the same as the other thread there would be a lot more posters in here calling Simply Grand antagonistic for making an "experiment" thread in the first place and trying to put fault on her for her dog being attacked and other such ridiculous things. I feel the same as I did in LMSWs thread, the dog should not have been there in the first place.

Nurture can only build on what nature gives us. You cannot change or add something to a dog that isn't already there genetically.

I don't think bull breeds are "overly aggressive and untrustworthy" at all. I do think that they generally have a higher incident of dog aggression just as they also have a lower incident of human aggression. Acknowledging aggression in any form can be more present in some breeds more than others is not a bad thing IMO.

Beagles the breed standard calls for the beagle to be a merry little hound and I think this described them to a T. Generally beagles are happy dogs that get along with just about everyone. They are bred to work in a pack of dogs so they should be dogs that get along easily with other dogs. My beagle specifically doesn't have much interest in other dogs, she would rather scent than play with another dog. Beagles should be very confident and out going and a good beagle has solid nerves so can be a bit of a handful for some people as they are very confident, I don't find them to be a dog that is generally submissive to people. Malinois Mals are generally very pack driven so love their people. I find them to be quite handler submissive and often submissive to other dogs. However if pushed I can't see many Mals being tolerant of a rude or aggressive dog. While I think this is partially also how we raise them, our dogs are friendly and usually submissive when greeting people but don't have much value for people outside of their family. There are lots of things my Mal would do that would freak people out. When I'm working her its not unusual for her to snap her teeth at me, push me around, vocalize, her whole body will often shake and her teeth will chatter with adrenalin. I don't discourage many of these things and don't think twice about it, however I tend to find the sheer energy and drive that usually exudes from them can freak people out. When I'm at home Wiz will laze around with me but she's very serious and hard when in drive and working. They are usually quite territorial and socially dominant. They generally have an extremely high prey drive which can manifest itself in all sorts of ways if they are not given an adequate way to satisfy it, but that's not so much breed specific but across the board in any kind of driven dog. A well trained Mal is really an unbelievably amazing dog, but it's easy for them to be a complete out of control nightmare when they aren't trained, raised and managed correctly. That's true of many dogs, but when you have a dog at the high end of the scale for drive and workability like a Mal the consequences are much higher if you get it wrong. They aren't a particularly common breed for people to own (thankfully as they arent a dog for the average person) so it's unlikely many people would see them out and about.

Of course we generalize on breeds, that's why we have purebred dogs. Knowing each breed has specific breed traits helps us select a suitable dog. To call that "dog racism" is silly. Many bull breeds are prone to DA, just like they are less likely to be HA. Just like my beagle is prone to scenting, just like my Mal is likely to have a high prey drive. When it comes to be wary of certain dogs when out, my dogs don't socialize with dogs I don't know but I also know the types of dogs they are less likely to respond well to.

I've heard all those things and more and my standard response to the 'my dog should do it just because' people is usually to ask them if they work for free? The reality is that people who believe that and approach training their dogs that way rarely ever have a dog with any real reliable obedience or life skills. Keep doing what you are doing if it is working well for your dog :)

There are a surprising number of dog toys out there that look a bit 'suspicious', or maybe I Just have a dirty mind :laugh:

LOL. Wisdom's Hurley toy got run over by the ride on mower, but it was unscathed :laugh:

My (aka Wisdom's) number one favourite at the moment would probably the Swing'n'Fling durafoam ball, I use it in training a lot but also out and about as it floats and she really loves it, she can tug on it and chase it. It isn't super bouncy though, for bounciness I like the Ultra or Erratic balls or we also have Hurley which she loves (well she loves anything really :laugh:) which is a stick shape but is quite bouncy.

It is true, it is also really easy for dogs to 'strip' tennis balls and rip the fur off them, then chew the inside ball into pieces. At the end of the day tennis balls even good quality ones are made for playing tennis, not as a dog toy, so they will never be as good or as suitable as a toy designed specifically for dogs. Obviously lots of people use tennis balls for their dogs, but I also find they don't last long. ChuckIt make a range of balls called Ultra Balls which are similar to tennis balls but rubber, they are heaps bouncier and they are a great alternative to tennis balls. As someone who has a dog who is ball mad and would literally retrieve a ball for hours, I think it is worth investing in quality toys. They last longer, they are usually more fun for the dog, and they are safer for them to play with.

Ha ha! I'm not quite sure I can manage that one! LOL! Wiz would enjoy it though, she thinks she is a lap dog :laugh:

I would imagine she will start slowing down, well I hope so or you'll have giant Malinois :laugh: Now I'm going to hijack the thread with puppy pics. Hopefully I will have some new ones to contribute to this thread before the year is out ;) Baby Wiz and Daisy (Daisy is extremely unimpressed LOL!) Here is a before and after shot of me and Wiz!

That doesn't make it ok not all dogs know how to fight or cause damage but that doesn't mean it's not aggressive behavior or that it is acceptable or just "rough play". The more this dog is allowed to practice this behaviour it can become better at causing real harm. OP I agree with others who said to report it.