Personal protection dog?

[Calider]

We had a few PPD over the years that we bought from a K9 training center in Minneapolis, and two imported from Canada, the most memorable being a czech shepherd named Nitro, and while I loved him dearly, he was not at all like having a normal dog. There were times when he would "protect" us when we didn't ask him to and family and friends were afraid of him. He would not bite, but barked and lunged very threateningly. He stopped INSTANTLY when we told him to, but he would scare people without being asked. This is the norm for PPD, there are very, very few who will not automatically try to protect their owners, regardless of how they are trained. Some of them won't play with you, some of them are easily startled when woken up, some of them bond so strongly to 1 person that they are intimidating to everyone else, and some of them will go after anyone who isn't their handler. Some sites have several "classes" of dogs advertized, from just a well-trained family pet to a multi-purpose police dog. I'd strongly recommend going with a lower class, as most of these dogs aren't trained to actually attack someone, but just to frighten someone by barking and baring teeth. That reduces your liability considerably if someone gets bitten, who was not intended to get bitten. The "sentry" type dogs are by far the most dangerous to have, because they are literally just looking for any unusual disturbance in their area, and they are going to bite first and ask questions later. Granny comes over to drop off a basket of strawberries? Granny is hamburger now.

When I was tiny, like a toddler, we had just a very well-trained female black lab that knew every single dog trick known to man. She was the best family dog ever, because she was still a normal dog who would play and be nice, but when you told her "Watch 'em, Bonnie." she would hold someone where they were by standing and growling, herding them kind of like a sheep. If you told her "Get 'em, Bonnie!" she would snarl and nip and chase them out of the yard. Once they were gone, she'd go 100% back to normal, and she never attacked anyone out of the blue because she wasn't a guard dog, she was just a pet. She was raised and trained and treated like a normal dog, she wasn't like a canine soldier. Different training facilities have different training methods, and anything that raises their dogs like a soldier, where the dog is not allowed to be a dog, is probably best to stay away from.