Our Gentle Giants

Let’s be real: barking is obnoxious regardless of the reason why the dog is barking. And Roxie is a mild barker. She barks at cats when she sees them out the window and she barks when the doorbell rings. She is slowly learning to cool it when we ask her to, which is fantastic.

But the more we think about it, the more we are okay with our dogs barking when they hear someone coming into the house. Why?

Reason 1: It’s a nice alert that the house is being “invaded”

I don’t mean broken into, necessarily. But it’s nice to know when someone is coming in or someone is at the door. Sometimes, I’ll be in the house and think I heard the doorbell ring. If Roxie doesn’t bark, I know that it was just my imagination. If she does bark, then I know someone is at the door.

What if it’s the middle of the night and someone is breaking into the house? The dog will bark and I will arm myself with the lamp on my nightstand and promptly freak out.

Reason 2: To scare real intruders away

This won’t work for all burglars but it may make some think twice. Have you ever heard a Mastiff bark? Does not sound too friendly.

But don’t worry, we will train them to zip it when we ask them to

We’ve already started working with Roxie on being quiet when we ask her to. She will start barking at a cat outside and if we yell, “That’s enough” or, “Quiet!”, she will stop… sometimes. We are still working on it and we hope to have our giants trained that way as well.

Final thoughts

Great Danes and English Mastiffs are actually particularly friendly breeds. To be aggressive, they have to be trained/bred to act aggressively. Obviously we don’t plan on training our dogs to rip people’s legs off, but the intruder doesn’t know that! Well, I guess now you all know that our dogs won’t kill you if you break in… please don’t rob us!

 

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