Why I like smaller dogs.

I agree with you on the fact that when a dog is too big it looks clumbsy. When I was talking about 70lb american bulldogs I was referring to males. I have seen females 70lbs but that is a realy small male.

I think a good PP male should be 90 to 100lbs and a female around 80lbs and the reason I say this is because size does matter. I can tell you from personal experience from being attacked by two dogs in my life, I am a pretty big man and I just laid down on top of them and choked them out with my free hand and neither dog could do anything about it because they was just not big or strong enough to get out from under me. Now if that was a 120lb rott or even a 100lb ripped ambull I dont know if I would have been able to keep them pinned to the ground the way that I did.

Now a smaller dog will be able to run faster and jump higher but is that realy necessary in a PP dog? If your dog is chasing someone that someone is nolonger a threat to you or your family...right? So why would you need a dog that could catch someone? Police work is the only reason that I can think of. For an actual PP dog I would prefer a 100lb to 120lb dog for real world situations. Case scenario your wife is walking Rover down the street and some guy jumps out of a bush with a knife 70lb Rover grabs the knife hand, guy carries Rover because he just dont have enough weight behind him to take him down and he gets to your wife. I know thats way out there but you see what I am getting at?

In a real world PP dog I think I would be willing to sacrifice some speed for weight and brute strength. Your comments are welcome on this matter. Do you work with your dogs just for competition or are they actually used to guard your property and family? I never intended on entering my dog in anything but when I got him my vet trains dogs in PP work as well as obdience and she offered to train my dog. She competes in Schutzhund with shepherds and mals and she invited me to a comp in ohio one day and I entered my dog and he got his schI and I kinda got hooked and then he got his schII and I think I am done...I am just too busy to keep pushing him and after all we did just get him for a family guard dog to watch the kids when they are in the back yard playing.

Whats funny though is I have actually used him to track one of my boys before when he was late comming home, I let him smell some dirty laundry and off we went and he found him...lol!

One thing I was curious about though is French ring? In schutzhund we use a sleave that has a bite bar in it and this forces the dog to have a hard bite however in FR you use the body suit and the dog does not have to bite as hard to hang on? Does this effect how hard a dog bites in your opinion?

I agree your dogs do look great. I am very interested in PSA work because like I said I originally bought my ambull for a family guard dog and pet and I would love to put him in more real world situations other than the same old schutzhund routines.

However is it possible for a dog to learn PSA work after Schutzhund has already been imprinted in their head? Or would this be a very difficult transition? I found a trainer in Ohio and that is realy not too far of a drive for me.

I also would not mind getting my wifes boxer into it, I think she might do pretty good. We took her with us one day to do some sleeve work with our ambull and she got all charged up so the decoy wanted to see if she woud hit it and sure enough 4yrs old never done it before in her life she did with a nice full bite...That was a real funny situation right there because we never knew she had it in her, she is a realy friendly dog but it's almost like she learned from watching our other dog, have you ever seen anything like that?