Best Guard Dog For First Time Owner – All You Need to Know

Humans have been domesticating dogs for over 14,000 years, these animals make incredibly loving and loyal companions that not only provide you with protection and company but are also capable of helping you in physical tasks as well. At one point, humans started to selectively breed dogs in order to preserve and enhance certain traits and instincts, leading to the formation of a variety of specialized dog breeds. Today, we are going to be taking a look at some of the best guard dog for first time owner.

Guard dog breeds include some of the most powerful and reliable dogs that one can find, these dogs are the result of careful breeding that sought to enhance their best qualities; their protective nature, intelligence, physical strength, loyalty, and more. Having a loyal and well-trained guard dog by your side is the same as having your very own bodyguard; an intimidating looking companion who will alert you to anything odd that happens around you and will not hesitate to defend you.

Guard dogs are awesome and can make you feel really safe, however, training one is no easy feat, these dogs often require a strict hand in order to discipline them and make sure that they do not develop bad habits. Also, simply training a puppy for a month or two is not enough, even after you have trained your dog, you still need to carry out maintenance training to ensure that your dog does not develop bad habits.

An interesting thing about guard dogs is that each breed has its own distinct traits, meaning that training every dog requires a different approach, and to make things even more complicated, each dog has its own distinct personality that you will need to figure out yourself as you go. There are some breeds that are easier to handle, which makes them more suitable for a beginner who does not have a lot of experience with guard dogs.

Before we begin taking a look at some breeds that are good for beginners, let’s first go through why training is so important.

A well-bred guard dog will have incredibly strong natural instincts that will continue to develop as it grows, these instincts are strong enough to make a guard dog a really scary sight for strangers as they will show immense aggression towards anyone who they do not know. This is where training comes in, it provides a dog’s instincts with a direction to grow in, honing and refining those instincts so that they become controllable. Training also ensures that your dog will not develop bad habits, will remain obedient, and will carry out its duties as a guard dog.

A very important aspect of guard dog training is socialization; exposing your dog to various people and experiences so that it can develop a sense of what is bad and what is good. Poorly socialized guard dogs can become quite troublesome as they will become defensive against anyone who steps near you. Jean-Marc Landry places a lot of emphasis on exactly why dog socialization is so important, it gives your dog the sense it needs to use its guardian instincts correctly.

Now that you have an idea of what comes with training a guard dog and how you should go about it, we can start taking a look at some guard dog breeds that are easily manageable, making them easy to train and maintain.

As you can tell by this article, there are not a lot of guard dog breeds out there that are beginner friendly, guard dogs tend to have dominant and aggressive natures that make them hard to handle if you do not know exactly how to approach every breed. Also, dogs that are more assertive by default require more rigorous training and even more maintenance to keep them obedient.

Beginners should steer clear of pit bulls and Staffordshires especially as these breeds are particularly hard to train, and there have been incidents in the past that resulted in a guard dog becoming hostile towards its owner.

The last thing to remember is that you should get a guard dog from a reliable source, you need to make sure that whoever sells you a pup is capable of providing you with information about the dog’s lineage. Guard dogs are selectively bred to ensure mental and physical health stability, irresponsible breeders often produce pups that are defective and will not be able to perform their job correctly. A well-bred pup will cost more, but it will also serve you far longer and more effectively.