[Mick Trainer]

Reggie,

Whilst there is little doubt that there will indeed be an adjustment period this is not a normal nor desired reaction from any dog and certain not a Rottweiler. Whilst the change in environment will indeed cause her some stress if the Rott is truly sound this should be small and at times difficult to notice, for her to have such a reaction shows poor nerve development and a reduced ability to deal with stress. I often tell the story of taking a rescue Rott from a home where he had not been out of the run since eight weeks of age. No vets, walks, socialisation etc. Yet I picked him up and put him in the back of my car and took him straight to training where he met a huge numbers of people and dogs and never batted an eye lid. He dealt with the situation as though he had been there his whole life. This is a dog with sound nerve and I can give you many other examples of a similar thing. A dog showing such reaction as you describe shows a pronounced lack of nerve development and whilst with some work you may be able to get improvement out of the dog making excuses for what it is doing only fools yourself. Now all this can probably be over come with training (building confidence etc), you will need to do a fair degree of work to get her to the point of being a sound dog.

Further no dogs that acts like this would ever truly be considered a protection trained dog. Now I am sure others will jump in here and ask why you need such a dog etc and you will need to truly ask yourself if indeed you do but if you do having a dog behave in such a fashion almost certainly rules such ability out. WHilst there are many temperament qualites that a protection capable dog must have confidence is without question the most important and a dog behaving in such a fashion as a true lack of confidence and alsot certain rules out the dogs ability to handle the level of pressure seen in a real life threatening scenario.

Mick.