If one of you is already known to be allergic to dogs, avoiding a breed/mixed breed with long fur or prone to shedding is no guarantee that allergies won’t be a problem. You’d need to spend some time in close contact with the type of dog (or specific dog you have in mind) to be sure companionship doesn’t equate to sneezing fits.
Dogs 101 has short bios of various breeds that list suitability for particular situations and potential health issues and is one starting point for researching dogs.
I am fond of Labs (we’ve had two), but they require quite a bit of exercise (a tired dog is a good dog) and need a firm hand in training. Avoid large potentially aggressive breeds unless you absolutely have to have protection from the threat of dangerous marauding intruders. You don’t want training and legal liability headaches.
First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone for my input. My husband won’t like me saying this, but since he’s out mowing the lawn right now and won’t see my type this … my husband is rather cross that everyone is criticizing his breed choices. I, on the other hand, feel much better educated, knowing that I’m receiving a range of opinions rather than one that is heavily influenced by his own personal preferences.
If it isn’t obvious by now, the main challenge we’re trying to work out is this: he wants the most badass dog out there (badass meaning intimidating, as opposed to fast or well-trained or good diggers). I want an unintimidating beginner’s dog. So we have to find the best intersection of those traits.
From the responses here, there are two that stand out as the most promising. One is the mutt. I had no idea that mutts were less prone to genetic health issues until Chronos mentioned it! Others in this thread have also mentioned that getting a mutt or even an intentionally mixed breed dog can subdue some of their stronger instincts like hunting, herding, etc. and make them more manageable house pets. That sounds appealing and less intimidating to me.
A lot of other people have mentioned pit bulls or pit bull mixes as a more manageable alternative to mastiffs. This one in particular appeals to my husband, since pit bulls have that reputation as being muscular and aggressive, though he’s explained to me that with proper training, you can reign in their aggressive tendencies, making them appear to be more intimidating than they really are.
Also, thank you to the people who provided tips on training a dog, as I will surely need tips like that after we get one. Jcwoman, you definitely hit on a point that I suspected myself, but didn’t feel comfortable arguing to my husband about since he’s so much more knowledgeable about dogs. If a dog has dominant tendencies, then every one of his owners needs to establish dominance over him, not just one. And if I’m not used to being around dogs, then buying an incredibly dominant dog is setting myself up for a big challenge, especially since dogs work off of body language and it’s hard to fake body language.
You should check with your insurance company policy on having a ’ badass’ dog .
If the breed you pick is on your insurance list of ,banned breed and god forbid
the dog attack someone you won’t be protected . Of course people don’t tell their insurance they’re getting a dog for a pet , but since you toying with getting
the meanest and badass breed there is I think it wouldn’t hurt to find out before you get the badass dog to see if there a list of banned breeds with your homeowner insurance or see if there is one their web site.
Yeah, well, I’m beginning to be rather cross about your husband’s choices, too, so if he wants to come in here I’ll tell him so to his face.
All dogs are good dogs. But not all dogs are the right dog for every situation. Don’t let yourself get talked into a dog that intimidates you.
Enh. That’s kind of a crapshoot, though. You can’t ever really tell with a mutt pup what he’s going to be like, tempermentally, as an adult. I mean, they might be calmer, but then again … who knows. I don’t want to dissuade you from a mutt - again, all dogs are good dogs! You just can’t make predictions about them like you can the purebreeds.
They do tend to be a little healthier, though. A wider gene pool is always an advantage.
My current beast is a mix - poodle/bichon + some kind of terrier, probably. I hit the jackpot with him, but if I expand my kennel, I’d go for a purebred poodle or bichon.
Pitbulls are lovely dogs, but people who want them to be aggressive and intimidating have caused them no end of problems. Definitely review the laws in your neighborhood for pitbull ownership. Ditto for Rottweilers, Dobermans, Mastiffs, etc.
They’re smaller, smarter, and more athletic than you might imagine. They need real exercise. If someone shows you a big bruiser of a dog, it’s not a pitbull.
It’s not a question of reigning in their aggressiveness. He would need regular training to help him be a good citizen and productive member of society. Pitbulls are much less aggressive than they’re PR suggests, but because of the laws and general hysteria, you’d need to make double sure that your dog never even gives the stink eye at your neighbors.
It really worries me that your husband is more concerned with having an intimidating dog than a well-trained one.
For the record, dog training is less about establishing dominence than it is about establishing a relationship with a new roommate. You need a dog to be a good family member and also you need him to be polite and friendly when he meets your neighbors. It’s hard to establish that by constantly jumping up a dog’s butt, shouting, “No! ME ALPHA!”.
And make no mistake - you don’t want a dog you have to worry about constantly: is he going to get loose? Is he going to bite someone? Is he going to run away with me? Is he going to growl at me?
It’s just a non-stop pain in the ass. Who wants to live with that hassle? If your husband wants to look like Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown, he should get a motorcycle. It’s less work.
You’ve been talking about buying a dog. I hope your husband doesn’t intend to get one from a pet store. Please don’t support puppy mills and backyard breeders. Please adopt instead. As others have mentioned, there are purebreed rescue groups. Or, purebred dogs can often be found at shelters. And there’s nothing wrong with a mutt, either. I have no idea what my dog is. I think she’s a cross between a Lab and a Dalmatian. But she’s very sweet and obedient. She’s very low energy and medium size, about 50 lbs. or so. And even though both Labs and Dalmatians are profuse shedders, her coat is very soft and fine and hardly sheds at all.
As said. All dogs are good dogs. You have to be a good ‘host’ though.
I’m 57yo now.
As a kid we had a Hungarian Sheep dog. And Full size tri-color Collie (black fur instead of brown blond).
Then I had a Chocolate Lab as my own first dog. Alpine saved my ass. I would have been so alone without her.
Then a Border Collie mix and Pointer Border Collie mix. We have had some VERY high energy dogs. Wonderful animals. My best buds.
You’ve never owed a pet of any kind??? It’s different. It’s like having a 10yo child. You can trust them, but they need a tremendous amount of care. Consider how to take care of them when you go on vacation…But they give it back in spades.
My Wife worked as an animal control officer for a few years (no kill shelter in our county). She knows dogs. We are now without a dog, and it’s tough. We also have busy lives, and are often ‘home alone’.
Mixed breeds are less prone to health issues than pure breeds.
As your husband has worked at a Vet, I would trust his opinion. But consider your age too. Make sure you can pick the dog up. You will be taking it to the vet. Say less than 50lbs.
She didn’t say that her husband was a vet, only that he had worked in a vet’s office.
There are mobile vets (and mobile groomers, too). They are a bit more expensive, as they have to pay for fuel, and insurance and wear and tear on their vehicles. But they are worth it if your dog can’t get in the car. And when I had to say goodbye to my old Lab, the vet came to the house to perform his euthanasia where he could slip away in familiar surroundings.
I’ll go ahead and be a very moderate anti-Pit voice. Not the crazy “all pit-bulls are vicious killers” anti-voice. But the sane, “they can be difficult” anti-voice. I love pits, but they really can be very dog-reactive and believe me that is a genuine pain in the ass to deal with. Every well-raised pit I’ve ever met is an absolute sweetheart around people, but more than half have been a bigger handful than average dealing with other dogs.
If your husband is a capable trainer as you say that can certainly be moderated and you might get lucky and get a mellower individual. But just be aware it can be a problem and you might have to deal with people thinking you have a savage killer of a pet because it just lost its shit because some golden retriever in a car barked at it from a block away ;). Again love 'em, but they can be a handful.
And not to piss off your husband, but add me to the “no” chorus on presas and canes. And akitas or chow chows for that matter. Big, powerful, highly territorial, stubborn, difficult to train at times, potentially dog AND human reactive. Might be fine for your hubby, but for your first I wouldn’t recommend it. "
Thanks for this link. Just spent a while watching a bunch of their videos. For some reason they’re missing the P’s, so I can’t find a video for poodles. I watched a video on the golden doodle, though, which hit on your point of long hair and allergies – it said the allergy is to a protein in their skin, not fur. So thanks for the warning.
The toy fox terrier (I think that was the name?) looked appealing to me from the video, particularly when I learned they can walk on a tightrope. My husband doesn’t like small dogs, though, so if we got that I’d have to talk him into it.
She’s mostly white with brown spots on her ears. She has spotted skin, which you can see through her fur. She has the head of a Lab and the body of a Dalmatian. And her fur is very short and fine, not shaggy.
I’m extremely fond of one particular ‘pit bull’. However even in general there is just no evidence that the dogs called ‘pit bulls’ are any more aggressive to humans than other general categories of dog. That’s an important misunderstanding in society as a whole.
However I’d agree with Tamerlane it’s more reasonable to have the impression that ‘bully breed’ dogs are more likely to be aggressive to other dogs. Our is, big time (again probably a Dogo Argentino/APBT mix, ‘pit bulls’ from shelters are virtually all mixes, but I’ve heard this is fairly common with Dogo’s as well).
But repeating a different theme, most posts have made the assumption you want to get a puppy from a breeder and raise and train it. Some posts have suggested shelter. I personally would never get a dog from breeder, incentivizing the production of more dogs when huge numbers die unwanted. And if you go shelter there’s also the very realistic, likely even, option of a young adult (or even a middle aged or older dog if you like) which is already set in its ways. If those are good ways for you, you’re all set, unless it’s your particular goal not just to have a dog but to have trained it yourself.
Our girl was around 2 yrs old when she came to us, already superbly behaved. We’ve probably made her behavior slightly worse with ridiculous spoiling by some family members, but she’s still a very well behaved dog. Though fond of all people automatically, she’s not boisterous jumping up on them, just very pleasant and serene with high emotional IQ with people (eg. who is feeling down and wants attention, she’s pretty uncanny that way). She hates other dogs, that’s all. We cross the street to avoid them, problem solved (where we live, illegal for dogs to be off leash outside except dog run where we obviously don’t go).
But the point is, with non-puppy shelter dog you can choose an individual dog already grown into ways that suit you. And save its life.
This seems a good time to mention that adopting a rescue dog as an adult lets you know what you’re getting as far as temperament. It also lets you skip puppyhood. Don’t get me wrong. Puppies are fun. They are also babies. I just spent the day crawling around on the floor with my son looking at everything from puppy height. This includes electrical cords, that pen you dropped, pennies, etc, etc. They need to go out in the middle of the night. They will cry at night, just like a real baby. I love puppies, but there’s a lot to be said for getting an adult.
Seconded to all of this, with one additional caveat. Pit bulls are often bred to be dog aggressive. This does not mean that all pit bulls are dog aggressive. It does mean that many are. I had a dog aggressive Akita. Different breed, obviously. Here’s what that meant for us. No time off leash unless it was my property. He was highly trained and responsive to me. I could never, ever take my attention off of him anywhere other dogs were present or might be present. No casually taking him to the vet, the pet store, the beach, the park, hiking. I did all of those things with him but that extra element of potential violence added responsibility to me as his owner to make sure that everyone was safe. Sometimes that meant a muzzle, a leash, a harness, and crossing the street. Don’t take the possibility lightly.
If you decide to go the “bully” route, work with a responsible bully rescue. They will perform a full assessment on the dog, including an aggression assessment.
My Akita that I just mentioned - yeah, he was a pain in the ass. I loved him absolutely and he was an awesome dog, but he was a pain in the ass. It is nice to have dogs that I can trust not to snap and kill the neighbor’s lab.
You haven’t mentioned this, but perhaps one thing your husband likes about having a tough looking dog is that it’s protection for you, since he’s not around a lot. Something else to consider along that line is that almost any “large” (labrador-sized) dog is going to be a deterrent, without having to do anything at all.
This is true. It is also true, as was mentioned upthread, that people are afraid of black dogs. We had a black ('cept for white toes and a stripe on her belly) Lab/hound mix, as far as we could tell. She was a big goofball, who weighed about 70lbs., and was on the skinny side. People who were not “dog” people were terrified of her. Even when she was old and arthritic (she lived to be 15 & 1/2), she scared people. She was the mildest dog you could want, so it was kind of funny.
Regarding pit bulls and dog aggression–after much observation I think I’ve isolated part of the problem. My big dog, Bear, is a lab/husky mix and he really does not get along with bully breeds AT ALL. It’s not that they’re aggressive, per se, it’s that they don’t have what he considers to be proper greeting manners. They barge into established play groups, they ignore overtures, they don’t allow butt sniffs, they hump, they grab toys without establishing who owns them, they boss their way to the water bowls, etc. Bear is a stickler for proper manners and he’s dominant as hell so if he feels dissed there will be repercussions–he puts other dogs in their places but doesn’t actually bite, he roars at them and shoves and does that “RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH” thing. Pits won’t back down or negotiate so they’re likely to be the ones he gets into a scrap with. I also think the low set of a pit bull’s tail just looks disrespectful to a high set, curled tail type dog. Bear almost never gets into a shoving match with a snow dog or herding dog, it’s always the pits and occasionally the very fixated hunting type dogs that run afoul of his Miss Manners playbook.
My only real objection to the bully breeds is that they tend to be kinda dumb (at least in my opinion–then again, I prefer herding dogs so there you go) and they don’t look you in the eye much so I find them harder to train. Snow dogs are hard to train as well but it’s not a lack of brain power, it’s purely a lack of sufficient reward that makes them refuse to cooperate. I always say you can teach a snow dog to do anything–once. After that, it’s all “what’s in it for me?” They make up for it with a sense of humor though.
