What Are The Best Dog Breeds To Train As Bodyguards?
The breeds that make the best bodyguards are well known: Doberman, Rottweiler, German Shepherd, Malinois. Lesser known breeds are the Presa Canario, Boxer, and a few others.
Look at the dogs chosen repeatedly for military and police work: Doberman, Shepherd, Malinois. There is a reason for the choices. These breeds combine the intelligence, stamina, agility, strength, protective nature needed for such work into a size that is easily manageable by the average man. If your dog is injured, would you want to lift your 125 lb Rottweiler into the back of the truck or your 70 lb Malinios? But that 70 lbs, hurled aggressively at an opponent has plenty of man-stopping ability.
One point about choosing a breed: do not choose pit bulls. These dogs were NEVER bred for aggression to humans. In fact, they were ALWAYS, until the last 20-30 years, bred specifically to have zero aggression to humans. Any pit bull that so much as lifted a lip to snarl at a human in even the most "acceptable" situation was killed. No questions asked. This was done because of their use as pit fighting dogs — the handlers (not usually the dog’s owner) had to stop the fight at any point to examine an injured dog, and that dog could NOT bite or growl at the handler under any circumstances. It is a fallacy, and shows the utter lack of understanding of dogs, when so many "experts" recommend this breed as an aggressive breed. (buyer beware: don’t hire a trainer or buy from a breeder that recommends pit bulls as bodyguards). It is so against their nature. To make a pit bull aggressive enough to become a bodyguard, you really have to cross breed them with a larger and more aggressive breed. Unfortunately, creating a new breed takes time, dedication and expertise. Just mating a Rottweiler with a pit bull will give unexpected, non-standard results. You might end up with an excellent "bodyguard", or you might end up with a difficult, hard to train, time bomb.
The big question is why do you want a dog for a bodyguard? Training or buying a trained dog for your bodyguard is a huge undertaking and a huge responsibility. There are MANY poor trainers out there who can turn your dog into a serious liability. It is very hard sometimes to know the bad trainers from the good, since just because the dog performs beautifully in a demonstration does not mean that he has not been inadvertently trained to a common stimulus, such as a sound that any child might make when playing. This would cause the dog to go off on someone when he hears that sound — and then you might have a dead child on your hands, as well as losing your dog and paying a huge sum of money. We can’t even put a price on the guilt you should experience for allowing such a thing to happen.
When looking for a good bodyguard that will be on call twenty four hours a day and devote their life to your protection, often a human is not the direction you want to go. Throughout history, dogs have been bred and trained to protect humans against many different kinds of threats. Most dogs are instinctively bodyguards that will protect their family and territory. When you become a dog owner, whether you want to or not, you become that dog’s family, or a part of his pack. As a part of the pack, many dogs will take it upon themselves to become a bodyguard for you and your home. However, if you are specifically looking for a dog to train as a bodyguard, some will be more successful than others. It is easy to think that size is the most important factor when choosing a dog for bodyguard purposes. This is not necessarily accurate. While you would not usually want a rat terrier protecting you and your family from danger, a large dog doesn’t always make the best protector either. One of the
