Our K9 friends are potential weapons

This is how it should look!

What is it with all these dog owners who think that you can just get a dog and let it grow up without attending doggy school? I frequently stress that also small dogs need leadership and obedience, but the importance become so much more obvious when we deal with larger breeds of working-type. Keeping an adult German Shepherd uneducated is like handling a Qassam rocket. You have no control over where it hits and it might just blow up in your own face. The education of the dog is equivalent to the control mechanisms of a high-precision weapon.

In our proximity someone owns an adult German Shepherd male, who has also been used as a stud. He is not the aggressive type, but he is very dominant, which of course has been strengthened by them letting him breed females. Unfortunately, human ignorance has deprived him of a true leader, which obliged him to take on this role himself. Consequently, his territorial behaviour has developed uncontrolled, which sadly enough caused him to bite a neighbour the other day. He had got his rabies shots, but after these kinds of incidences precaution indicates quarantine to secure absence of infection, so now he spends one week in a compound. The owner considers getting rid of the dog because he feels that he cannot handle him. No wonder, he is a strong 45-50 kg male that pushes and pulls you around with no respect whatsoever. With knowledge, patience and consistency I think he would be an easy fix, but through one poor decision, he can end up with some "dog trainer" who will try to fix him in a disrespectful way, by abuse and cruel methods. That will either break his spirit or make him worse. I pray that he will end up getting a fair chance to rehabilitate.

Returning to the smaller dogs, this whole neighbourhood is full of small, to mid-sized dogs (but also big ones) that show all kinds of undesirable behaviour, such as uncontrolled territorial aggression, but also general aggression towards both humans and other dogs. These dogs all run around loose and the owners neither care nor excuse themselves after incidents. Only in our house we have two trouble children. One Pekinese female, who is both dominant aggressive and extremely territorial. She has repeatedly attacked Goshen and tried to bite her hind legs, but her size fortunately prevents her from causing any greater damage, as well as Goshen nowadays is more cautious around this dog and deters her with determination. She is standing at their balcony all day long barking and I can tell you that a Pekinese territorial barking is not particularly pleasant in the ears after a long day. The owners are toothless in their authority and they could not control her if they ever wanted to. I just cannot understand how they stand living like that. Our next neighbours bought a male Chihuahua puppy some months ago, and of course they did all the mistakes in the book. He has grown into a confused and very stressed boy who has way too many duties around the house. Since the owners did not provide him with any clear guidelines, he is today (or at least he think he is) head responsible of both surveillance, house alarm and protection, as well as general organisation of the activities in their family. He is never off the leash and often in the arms of his owner which have prevented him from even becoming socialised with other dogs, but his dominant character is palpable. He is barking in canon with the Pekinese bitch and we live right in between. Imagine that.

I am so lucky to have a quiet, harmonious and kind dog. Or... maybe it does not have that much to do with luck at all, but instead something completely different and not at all by chance.