From: taylor@hardy.u.washington.edu (Allen D. Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.pets.dogs
Subject: Attack/Guard Shelty
Date: 8 Jan 1993 21:26:22 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Distribution: world
Reply-To: taylor@cac.washington.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: hardy.u.washington.edu

I don't read this newsgroup too often.  I am currently unable to keep a
dog.  My ex got Foxy, my Shelty, in the divorce.  I am not home enough to
keep a dog myself ... yet!  I talked about Foxy here about two years ago,
when he had run out of the door and got hit by a car.  $1,500 later he's
fine.  What I wanted to share this time was about guard/alarm dogs.  

We used to have a 5.5 pound cockapoo.  Every single house around ours was
robbed during a nine month period except ours.  The police said that
having a dog was the reason why.  He said it didn't matter what kind of
dog, as long as the dog "sounded the alarm."  The police said that a
burglar will always pick a dogless house if he (the burglar) knows there
is a dog.  Burglars are basically lazy folk and why mess with a house with
a dog when there are so many dogless houses available.

Joey died after 12 years and my soon-to-be-ex finally agreed to let me get
my Shelty.  Foxy has run two people off since we got him.  The first was a
burglar.  The second was a contractor that Foxy took a dislike to.  When
we got Foxy, I thought that he wouldn't be an attack dog.  That at best I
could expect an alarm dog.  That was before Foxy realized his full growth. 
 Shelty he is, small he isn't.  He weighs in at 42 pounds and he's not
fat.  Nor is he shy and retiring like most Shelties.  He is extremely
aggressive and dominant.  I worry that my ex can handle him.  I know that
I had to alpha roll him about once a month or so because he was constantly
challenging me.  I learned more about the subtlities of dog dominance from
him than I every wanted to know.  When I do get another dog,  I'll be
prepared though.

I heard a ruckus out in the back yard one night after bed time.  It was
one of those barks that says, "get out here and get out here NOW!!!" So I
did.  I got there just in time to see a stranger disappearing over the
back fence with Foxy hot on his heels.  As fast as Foxy is I sometimes
wonder how the burglar got to the fence with out loosing some piece of his
anatomy to Foxy.

Awhile later, I was standing in my living room talking to a remodeling
contractor.  Foxy was in a sit stay beside me.  All of a sudden, Foxy
growled and simultaneously lunged at the contractor.  I grabbed at his
collar before he made contact with the contractor.  After that, we had to
close Foxy in a bedroom whenever the contractor was there working.  I
still don't know why Foxy did that.  

--Allen

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,
   not by mechanical aids,
but by an infinite expectation of the dawn,

which does not forsake us
   even in our soundest sleep . . .
                                            --Henry David Thoreau
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Allen D. Taylor      University of Washington   taylor@cac.washington.edu
Information Systems  Seattle, Washington  USA   Human 1st - World Citizen 2nd
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