Would your dog defend you on a walk? If so what breed is it?

[MontezumasPuma]

I love my Springer to bits but if I was attacked while walking she’d either wet herself or throw herself at them for a fuss. I work and walk in remote locations and could do with a dog that would stand up for me. We have 5 year old DS and 19 month DD so the breed needs to be family friendly.

@Sitdowncupoftea you talk like you know it all 🤷‍♀️ and you’re talking rubbish!

My Border Collie bailed up an intruder in the house, didn't actually bite him but had him up against the wall

I live in a rough area and have a bull whippet, a saluki lurcher and a spaniel. The spaniel is soft as shit and would hide behind me but I frequently walk at night on lonely roads due to work schedule and the two other dogs will growl at drunk men on their way back from a night out who try to talk to me, if they get too close they'll lunge and I have no doubt they'd protect me. They're fine in the day time, but have very good threat awareness. Was stalked a couple of years ago by an older man who ended up looking in through my windows at night and leaving "love notes" for me, he'd test how friendly my dogs were by making kissing noises at them at first. One night at around 10pm he came around a corner out of nowhere at me and started walking right at me, and the bigger lurcher jumped at him and pushed him back with her paws on his chest, growling like a fury 😂In the day time they're lovely, they act like people don't even exist, but they do make me feel very safe.

@Sitdowncupoftea all these anecdote people have are very similar, huh? Walking in the dark, hassled by men, men showing up out of nowhere in the dark, variations on a theme. Fear reactivity because of the anxiety coming from the two-legged end of the lead.
100% agree with you, properly trained protection dogs are worth like £100k, no one would bother if every German shepherd or Rottweiler came hardwired to do anything more than bark and snap.

Border collies all have the instinct to herd, but they need to be taught how and when or they’re more a liability than an asset in a field of sheep or cows.

Some dogs have the instinct to defend their owner, but without proper training, they’re a public hazard, and if push comes to shove, aren’t likely to abandon their instinct for self-preservation to satisfy a less vital instinct to their own life.

The dogs going for 100k that are fully protection trained are trained to deal with much more than a stranger trying their luck in the dark. Things like going for an arm holding a weapon, guarding a vehicle or an object, being able to accompany a high profile person while ignoring many pushy people and focus only on someone who might be threatening, dealing with multiple intruders and continuing even when under extreme pressure or pain. Most people don't need that, they are sold into police work and to celebrities or famous sports people to guard their homes when they're very high profile. It doesn't mean that a normal dog's interest to respond with fear aggression doesn't come in very useful at times aslong as it's not responding with fear aggression to a nice man saying "good morning!" at a distance and putting his hand up at you in the daylight.

@wootaloo and fear based reactivity and protection are the same thing now, are they? Barking as a deterrent is useful, but I literally added that caveat three times in the post you’re responding to. The issue I was pointing out is that people are responding to this post as if their dogs are somehow incredible protectors and not bog-standard fear reactive dogs of a size to be intimidating to bad actors.

This is really interesting if you wonder what your dog would do

fb.watch/nbclnJLr4e/

If you can watch it an experiment where a dog trainer gets someone to break in and pretend to attack their owner

Very surprisingly it was the little dogs that weren't expected to step up that did

I feel my two would , my GSD has done so before now and my terrier is very feisty and follows my bears lead

But really interesting the pit bull ran away !

I was followed by a man at the beach one night, WetDog and I had been on a loooong walk and hadn’t quite beaten the sunset so it was dark and the beach was empty. This man was fishing alone and then turned and started to walk up the beach towards us, catcalling me and quickening his pace. I was terrified of his intentions and wanted to hurry back to somewhere safe, WetDog was also terrified but he showed this by parking his arse down on the ground with his back to me, growling and snarling. Wouldn’t get up and move. The growling had the effect of sending the threat away and if it hadn’t, I would probably have let WetDog off his lead to chase him off.

However, I know for a fact that he was protecting himself, not me, because he hasn’t been trained to do that. He was scared but he expressed it as fear aggression. However, if that man had been bitten by my dog, the law says that I would be liable and my dog would be called a ‘dangerous dog’ despite the man’s nefarious intentions. Not sure you can claim self-defence (however reasonable it would have been!) if the ‘weapon’ you had to hand had four paws and a set of teeth.

I've got a Lab, and he would. Normally, it's me that has to reassure him at night as he doesn't like the dark. I've even installed a security light in the garden for his night time whizzes as he wouldn't go unless I stood with a torch for him.

However, about 6 years ago, I got home from work extremely late one night due to a car accident blocking the roads and he'd been on his own longer than I wanted him to be and he needed walking. Despite it being midnight, there wasn't an issue as his walk was about an hour, and was a square route and went up one major road (never quiet), along a road full of houses, about a 2 minute walk through a quiet road, back onto another major road (again, never quiet), before walking along a major road before cutting back onto the road where I lived which was 2 mins away from the last main road. I was about 15 minutes in to his walk when I noticed a guy come out of the pub at closing time, and start walking behind me. I thought nothing of it given we were surrounded by houses. However, every time my boy stopped for a sniff or whizz, this guy would stop and just look around aimlessly, then start walking again the moment I moved off again. Instantly this raised my suspicions, however I was running out of houses and needed to cut through the quiet road to get back onto the main road to head home and I had no real options, I could either turn round and walk past him, go down the quiet road or stop and wait. So I stopped and waited with my phone out and just watched the man, who after a few minutes stood still eventually began to walk towards me. Somehow, my boy knew I was tense, and his heckles went up and he began to growl whilst staring at the man. It turns out, as the man explained when he got closer, the man was scared he would freak me out knowing it was late and was trying to keep a distance between me and him, but by doing so, had actually scared me more. He continued down the road whereas we gave it a few minutes before going down the quiet road (just incase the man was lying and was going to double back), however my boy never let that man out of his sight and continued his low growling until I told him it was okay and to continue. This is the same dog who whenever a delivery driver comes to the door, he runs and gets his teddy to show them, and takes a different teddy to bed every night (he has many!).

I think they take their reactions off you. If you're tense, they'll go into protection mode kind of thing (edit: protection might be the wrong word, but I don't know what else to call it). If you're chilled out, they are

I have the same concerns, but like to think if that happened, the man would run away and if he needed to seek treatment later, the bite would be from an unknown dog, as he wouldn’t want to risk any investigation of what he’d been up to.

Just an update because I am so so proud of my two boys

Last night my terrier woke at 5am , growling and leapt off the bed , woke my big lad and both went to the rear doors , then really went crazy, I heard a bang and someone running , it seems someone had been prowling the garden , I let them both out and they made a bee line straight for the end of the garden where I'd heard the bang and running

I almost wish I'd managed to let my bear out before they'd got over the fence

And that is why as a woman living alone my dogs make me feel safe. ,y early warning system is my little guy and my big bear is the muscle . If you saw a very large German shepherd hurling toward you at 30 mph you'd run too. He is absolutely the softest dog but he knows his job , and my little man alerted him to an intruder and growled and barked and ran alongside the big lad to see them off .

I'm so proud of them .

I think having a larger breed is a better deterrent though. as in, someone is less likely to try anything in the first place. and so they don't need to step up

" It turns out, as the man explained when he got closer, the man was scared he would freak me out knowing it was late and was trying to keep a distance between me and him, but by doing so, had actually scared me more."

So it would have been fine if your dog had bitten a perfectly innocent person trying to do the right thing. Great.

I think the dog was on the lead. if the man got close enough to be bitten, I wouldn't believe his sketchy sounding reason for trailing OP

Pulled up this old thread because I owe my corgi an apology. We were in the park this morning and it took about 2 seconds for him to go from mellow and chill in the grass to on his feet between me and and a creepy possibly drunk guy who was walking toward me with an extremely weird leering look on his face. He's a good boy.

My old dog was the soppiest gentlest soul ever - a Labrador. He was looked after by a friend every time we went away and she told me that she was verbally abused by a group of young men one day while walking him & (to both of our amazement), his hackles went up and he growled and bared his teeth at them.

Yes my English bull terriers definitely would

I walk in a very remote locations and have done for over 40 years I have never once felt at risk of being attacked. I worry more about slipping over and breaking my ankle and finding I’m 4 miles from home amd that I’ve no phone signal which statistically is much more likely.
i suspect one of my dogs might bark if he or I felt threatened.
I guess the problem with having a dog that would stand up for you is that it may stand up for you when it’s someone harmless. Today my dog saw a women coming towards us on the beach there must have been something about her he didn’t like and he gave her a really wide birth started barking and emitting a low growl his hackles were up, this is completely out of character he normally ignores anyone he meets, (he’s also wouldnt hurt a fly). But if he was more of a guarding type dog he might have been more aggressive not something I would want to live and walk with.

My collie/lab cross seems to have an innate (potentially irrational) sense of men who he perceives to be a threat. We must walk past scores of men a week, some with dogs, some on their own, some with kids or women. 99% of the time he ignores them or is polite if he’s greeted but the two times when I have felt that the man approaching (once from
behind when I was seated on a log, quite scary) is somehow putting me on edge, he has barked his huge, deep bark, snarled and lunged. The man approaching from behind was scared off - I have no doubt he was ill-intentioned as we had walked past him going the opposite direction not five minutes earlier and DDog had his hackles up. The other man was a bit taken aback and said “Jesus!”
but TBH I’d prefer DDog to protect me against an innocuous man than not spot the bad ones - they don’t generally come with signs on, after all…

He would. Although he’s a three legged poodle, so I’m not sure how much damage he could do.

My lab loves everyone and all other dogs, she is always desperate to play and say hi to people! However, I’m pretty confident if one of us was being attacked she would go for the attacker. I think most dogs would, they are generally pretty loyal!

All dogs have the potential though, so no one should have a dog at all?

Both of my dogs would defend me - they're both Border Collies.

All dogs have the potential though, so no one should have a dog at all?

That would be my solution. Tiny dogs, maybe. But nothing with a decent bite.