And double dumbass on you!!
An internet acquaintance w/ 3 younger children was recently menaced in their duplex, late at night, by the drunken SO of a good friend. Police were called, situation’s been dealt w/, etc but now they say, “The kids have wanted a dog for a long time, this is the perfect excuse to get one, a dog will be a fun pet that will protect me and my family and I’ll never have to fear for my safety in my home again!” (I’m paraphrasing.)
I think this is all kinds of dumbassery. Do not mistake a dog for a gun. A gun does one thing, and well, and when you tell it to. You can control it far better and render it harmless as necessary. It’s less likely that your gun will run out the door to your neighbor’s yard and attack their kids than the dog you bought ‘b/c dogs naturally protect their pack so why pay to train it’ doing the same thing.
A dog is either a pet you cannot rely on 100% to save your life or a trained, working animal you cannot rely on 100% to not tear you kid’s face off if they make the wrong quick movement.
Confusing this whole thing is that unless the dog was VERY well-trained, it wouldn’t have protected the owner in this situation anyway; what family dog will realize in time that a formerly accepted person now needs to be subdued before harm comes to its owner?
The psychology works both ways. Your friends think of a dog as protection. And a lot of low level criminals think of a dog as protection. So regardless of the dog’s actual abilities, it works because of what people think.
I’ve found dogs to be amazingly effective against casual burglary: kids or junkies or other such types are not willing to kill a dog, and don’t want to deal with one harassing them/alerting the neighbors. Remember, you don’t have to make your house a fortress, just less attractive than your neighbors.
Dogs are also amazingly effective at making you FEEL safe when you’ve had a scare like these people have had. If you tend to wake up in the middle of the night convinced there is someone in the house, it’s very comforting to remember that if there were, the dog would be going crazy. This is not a little thing: constant terror is no way to live.
Dogs are not so effective at actually defending you against crazy intruders. However, they do give you a minute or two warning, and that can make a big difference.
my biggest concern, actually is that people who buy pets/animals for dubious reasons (e.g. rabbits on easter, etc.) generally don’t care for the animals properly.
Then again, incidents in which an intruder managed to wrestle a Rottweiler from the grip of a homeowner and use it against him are so rare as to be practically non-existent.
But, what a dog WILL do, is bark like mad when someone comes close to the house. At the very least, drunken friend wouldn’t have made it into the house without someone noticing.
I have two mini-schnauzers. They’ve never been trained. They can’t do any tricks, they don’t come when called, if they weren’t on their leashes outside, I’m not sure they’d come back to me (but they probably would). But every time I’ve been in my basement and thought I heard someone pull in the driveway or been laying in bed and thought I heard my front door knob jingle I know it’s in my head since the dogs would be all over it if it was real. No, they’re not going to protect me, but they will give me a heads up. They’ll give me time to grab my phone and figure out what’s next. If someone’s planning to kick in my front door (let’s even assume it’s a ‘friend’ that knows the dogs are harmless), the dogs will let me know as soon as the screen door is opened. Those extra seconds are what would allow me to call the cops or go and look out the window, or grab my kid and run out the back door.
I should mention though, that’s not why I got them, it’s just part of the package, especially when you have high energy dogs. Honestly, if I get out of my chair to fast they go apeshit and start barking up a storm.
Before you get to worked up about this, you should find out what kind of dog they’re planning to get. Are they getting a pitbull that they really think they can train to attack or are they getting a terrier that really will be for the kids.
And crazy relative is the worst possibility for this. We had guns in the house growing up, and one thing that was pounded into my head was that you never threaten with a gun: you shoot with it. If you don’t feel like your life is in danger, leave it out of the equation. If you do feel like your life is in danger, don’t negotiate.
This works when you wake in the night to find a strange man in the house. But who is willing to shoot family? In those cases, the gun gets used to threaten and ends up in the hands of the crazy person.
That reminds me of a story from many many years ago. My dad was at work late at night. He thought he heard someone nosing around out back, so he grabbed his handgun and went to check it out. As it turned out, it was a cop. The cop after saying “Joe, when you think you hear something, just call us and we’ll check it out” asked him a very important question, he said “Joe, could you shoot someone if you had to?” my dad responded “Without a doubt.” and the cop replied “Good, because if you can’t he’ll take the gun and shoot you.”
It’s something I’ve always remembered and anytime someone’s talked about getting a gun I’ve always relayed to them…if you can’t bring yourself to kill another person, you’ll be the one who’s going to be dead. Even if it’s not the ‘he’ll take your gun and shoot you’ scenario, if you pull a gun on someone they might have their own gun or even if unarmed they could panic and beat the life out of you.
ETA, also, don’t forget, even if you say that your going to keep it unloaded, if you point an unloaded gun an someone who has their own weapon, they’re going to defend themselves. They don’t know it’s not loaded.
I have a couple beagles. Their job is not to take a burglar down. It is to tell me there is a noise or something is not quite right. Then I would call the police. They work just fine.
There’s watch dogs and there’s guard dogs. Almost any family pet can make a decent watch dog, whose job is to watch and alert you by barking and behavior if something is up. A sufficiently alert teacup chihuahua can yap her little head off at an unusual step at your door. A guard dog is a dog who’s likely to attack, and yeah, those are probably not generally good family pets.
So I agree, it really sounds like the kind of dog she’s getting and her commitment to socialization and training will tell you more. If Timmy’s been wanting a beagle and this is just one more incident to tip the decision scales to “yes”, I don’t see a problem. If Timmy’s been wanting a beagle and they get a vicious [insert name of a breed with a bad reputation] and they don’t properly socialize and train it, then she’s stupid.
It may read like I think the acquaintance should get a gun; I don’t but I see how my post looks like I do. I’m saying they’re putting too much faith in dogs and expecting them to have the same use as a gun. I don’t think a gun is what they need, I think a burglar alarm attached to 911 is what they need.
But I likewise don’t think she should expect a dog (ha, I typed god twice there) to save the family if it’s really a pet. The drunken SO was let in under a pretense of the friend needing a babysitter in an emergency, then turned grabby/pushy/assaulty. One can’t expect a pet dog to turn into a protector at the snap of a finger or a command unless that dog’s well-trained. All the barking in the world wouldn’t have stopped anything, it might only have dissuaded the drunk and from what I hear the inebriation was deep; the dog might not register w/ someone so out of it.
Those of you w/ dogs, do you think there’s a level of training they could receive where they could be all things to all people in all situations as needed?
It sounds like you need a German Shepard trained for police work. Honestly, I don’t think the random homeowner is going to have the money or patience to train a dog to be nice to a house guest now, but then chase them out the next minute. I just don’t think it works like it does in the movies.
Also, regarding the burglar alarm, that wouldn’t have worked in this situation anyways since it sounds like the person was let in. At this point, I assume friend won’t be allowing that person in their house anymore. So that should be the end of the problem. If they continue to let that person in their apartment it’s kinda their own fault at this point but at least they’ll be on guard enough to know that a problem may arise. If they’re considering getting a dog because they think this might happen with other people, maybe it’s time to move.
Of course people still let people into their house, people that shouldn’t come back keep showing up, not everyone can afford to move. The world isn’t a perfect place. In a situation like this, I could see getting a dog. Like I mentioned earlier. A dog will give her a heads up that someone is coming towards the house. It’ll give her a chance to look out the window and see who it is before they get to the door and if it’s someone that they don’t want around it gives them some extra time to deal with it.
ETA, see if you can find out what kind of dog she’s planning to get. Yeah, if she’s getting a pit bull or rottweiler, I’d probably step in and start getting a bit preachy about it. But if she’s getting a Jack Russell or Labradoodle, I’d probably not even bring up the fact that I had these thoughts and just go on like it hadn’t even crossed my mind.
I had a dog that aggressively barked at strangers. I came home to a burglarized house one day with my shit gone, two empty cans of spam on the kitchen floor where they broke in and a happy dog.