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Originally Posted by Hog's Gone Fishin
I've owned several Rotts in the past . Used to have a Champion line from "Radio Ranch" and sold pups to soldiers at Fort Bragg.
Mine were well trained and loveable.
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Yeah - I over-research the hell out of most things and really thought I had done so with my rot. But I still hadn't really prepared myself for him.
Grand champion lines from serbia; spectacularly bred dog (Thunder Mountain actually breeds his littermate as one of their two dams). But he's the alpha from the litter and comes from REALLY high drive lines. So he's very very affectionate but it can be on his own terms sometimes. He's not a dog who, when he's laying down, you oughta walk over to him and rest your head on him like he's a pillow.
We've trained him to simply walk away in those situations where he's uncomfortable, but there's not a ton you can do to get rid of the underlying drive. And you can't come down hard on him for growling either because that's how he communicates - if you train a dog who gives those little guttural grumbles not to do it - he won't. And that doesn't mean anything other than he's simply not gonna warn you before he gets pissed off.
I spent a solid 18 months trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole with mine and it got to where myself and the dog openly loathed each other. It wasn't a path to continue down. But once I learned how to guide him and allow him to still have agency (because he's still a sentient being; free will is still a thing there), I understood better how to train him.
Now he's my freakin' shadow; dog loves the hell out of me. But it took some doing and a completely different approach than what I'd done in the past.
Gotta put the work in with dogs like those.
And I also think my Rot is different. We have a couple folks on the board with dogs from this breeder and from different lines (mine was their first european breeding) and they're evidently super sweet. Dogs have personalities of their own - it just is what it is.