We're finally getting our first home and it isn't complete w/o a new dog!  

My first one was a welsh corgi.  She was a ding-bat dog (annoying) but was surprisingly very trainable with hand signals, obedience, etc...   I spent a lot of time with her and cut my teeth on training.  I'm confident I can give the extra it'll take to train/socialize the more willful breeds so I'm looking at the rotties and dobermans.  This dog will 1) be part of the family 2) in a healthy environment and 3) relied upon when I'm not at home or asleep to be first line of defense. Defense wise I'll rely on their natural instinct and I think either one would suit that requirement, but which would make the best family pet?  It seems dobes are more emotionally sensitive and the rotties are stoic in their approach which I prefer but I like the lean medium size of the dobe. Rotties can get pretty big from what I've seen.  Emotionally charged like a corgi or Dalmatian would be really annoying.  Are dobes like that?  Dang, this could be the 64 million dollar question....

The pup will have plenty of room to move (yard, house), be around an elderly cat and a 7 month old baby.  I'd like to hear some opinions and experiences.

My first dog was a rottie...it was the runt of the litter and came out to be an average size dog (about 80lbs...) although another one of the littler owned by someone I know came to 130lbs which is too big for my tastes too...


ANYWAY, best dog ever.  It was very smart and very protective, but also understood how to listen and be courteous to guests....I believe it is more important how you train them so make that your priority and you will shape the dog to be however you want it to be...as long as you have a brain and patience!!!

Rottie FTW, make sure you chop off the tail though lol

I don't have any experience with dobermans but I did grow up with a Rottie.  Best damn dog ever, but we had to put him down due to cancer after 12 years.  The only problems were his hip dysplasia, but if we kept him around 100lbs it wouldn't bother him so much.  Really smart, great disposition (loved kids), really good guard dog.  I can't wait to get another but I need a bigger place.

I prefer the dobie because of its "smaller" size - more house and toddler friendly. Both are intelligent, trainable, and loyal - can't go wrong with either.

PS - Congrats on the house but don't let your homeowners insurance co know you got a "bad" breed dog. They will probably ask you if you got any pets, they did me and wanted to know what breeds they were. I can only assume it was for liability purposes.

Guns, dogs, etc...  Doctors and insurance compaines who ask those kinds of questions get the "Nope, dont have any!" response from me  

Rotty for sure , you can select one of a somewhat smaller stature from some breeders , and probably a bit cheaper due to larger ones being "desirable" . They were originally a herding/working breed and will be very protective of the rest of their pack , loyal to a fault , and easily trained.  And nothing says " get off my lawn " like a female rotty in full leave my people alone mode.

I had both of those at one time or another while growing up. Both dogs were very easy to train and were very good with older children. The rottweiler seemed to be a little more patient with toddlers coming up and tugging on his ears. The doberman was pretty skittish when it came to babies and would bark like mad if one cried.



The doberman didn't shed as much as the rottweiler ... at least in my experience. And the doberman didn't require as much food at the rottweiler. The rott would eat from sun up until sun down and the vet would STILL tell us he was underweight. We fed him like crazy, but he was so active he couldn't keep any weight on.



I'd happily have either breed, however.

Nice lookin' rott , Females are the way to go with that breed . Lovable as all hell , but ain't afraid of nothin'

Rittie FTMFW,  We are on our third Rottweiler they are great dogs.  We live in a rural area and I don't think my wife could stay there if it weren't for them being around.  
My wife became pregnant after we got our first Rottie, the dog took to the new child as if it where her own, great family dog.

Kid friendly.



However I wouldn't completely trust my kids alone with any dog especially at an early age.

Good watch dog even though we didn't get her for that purpose.



We got Tasha to be the family dog and did not train her to be aggressive in the least. She does have instincts that all dogs have and that is a plus when it comes to being a protector. When someone comes to the door she has to greet them first. Overall Rotts are great dogs and I would highly recommend them.

Nick

trim those nails !!!   She'll love ya for it.

No socialized dog is going to do anything for "defense." Dogs are for warning and deterrent, not "defense."

Any dog that would attack a stranger in your house you should not be let around a cat and a baby. Socialized dogs do not attack humans. They may act like they will, but it's all bark.

Dogs are pets. Buy a friend, not a guard.

Her nails now are as short as they are in the last picture. We couldn't cut her nails for crap until we used that dremel-tool looking thing that they are selling on TV and flea markets. The wife took about 2 hours and gave Tasha a good grinding. She didn't like it at first but she got used to it and now she sort of enjoys it.

Nick

My dogs run around on caliche all day , natures grinder .  I hated having my pups in town and having to trim them all the time .

There's some error in your logic.  A cat or baby is "KNOWN" to the dog through their day to day interaction.  A stranger is not.  Give the dog a little credit cause it's been proven.   They know the difference.  Attack is not the goal outside their familiarity but watchfulness and the willingness to protect is, and it's natural given a healthy environment.  

An unhealthy environment describes your scenario.  You've had a bad dog, a dog gone bad?

That's not the point at all. You can't have both. Any dog who would attack a  human is not a socialized animal. It takes time for an animal to have interaction with others. What are you going to do with the dog while you train it to bite people and also let it around the baby? Attack dogs are trained to only attack when their master tells them to. The whole point of an attack dog is its comfort with strangers until its master tell them to attack. No human is going to push a dog to the point it attacks them in order to rob a house. A dog that's going to attack a human to protect your kid isn't something you can train. At what point is your dog attacking a person justified? Dogs don't have that capacity of reasoning. Is it supposed to attack the 8 year old kid that's fighting your 8 year old kid? Is it supposed to attack an old man who accidentally knocks him to the ground and he cries? You can't give it the run down of who to attack and who to not attack and ultimately you're responsible for its actions.

Get a dog with a loud bark and a keen sense of its territory and surroundings. That's all you can ask for. And you'd be lucky if you get it since every dog, no mater what the breed, has a unique temperament. You'll never know if the dog has it in them until it happens and why would you rely on that?

Never owned either one but I can tell you this don't assume the training techniques that worked for one breed will work for another.  I tried to train my Rhodesian like I did my labs and that did not work out well, ignorance on my part.  Good luck

There can be only one.








And, btw, not all rotties are big.



Jasmine (pic above, RIP), was fully grown and only 72 lbs.

beat me to it.

Dogs either know "it's okay to bite humans" or "it's not okay to bite humans".  Maybe there is someone out there who can train a dog "go/no go" judgement without the handler's direct control, but I've never seen or even heard of him.  Police and military K9 trainers can't do it.  Shutzhund trainers can't do it.  The frikken dog whisperer can't do it.  And Joe Bob the "I trained my sheltie to fetch my slippers" family man sure as shit can't do it.

A search of "good family dog" will consistently turn up the dobie (along with boxers) if you want a dog with a certain appearance.

Yup. Don't register it, and truly convince yourself that it's part black lab. We were going to switch homeowner's insurance once upon a time when our Rott was still alive, and we got DQ'd over the dog breed. When I did the back to college thing more recently, I had a prof who was all bummed out because she was running into the same problem. She loved her new dog, adopted from rescue, no papers, etc, and she was running into problems trying to find insurance for a house she was buying because she was identifying it as a rottweiler. She was showing us pictures.


"I think that looks like it has some black lab in it."


"No, no, it's a rott."


"Nope, I'm pretty sure that's a lab mix. You can tell the next insurance company that you adopted a rescue dog, and someone who knows a lot about dogs told you that it's a black lab mix. Now think about the potential benefits of accepting what I said, even if you decide I'm wrong in a few months when the dog is older."