Comment

Comment by Phil Harris on August 20, 2011 at 2:05pm

As you know I am a fan of temperament testing. I think you are correct that a working dog-protection dog test needs to be specific. I felt the anatolian was a dog with little drive and a little fear. My dogs have more drive and less fear. they would pass the stranger, the friendly stranger. My guys would alert and be at the end of the leash, not pulling but ready for the umbrella, the noisy stranger. They would definitely be protective with the aggressive stranger. We are working on plastic now as a matter of fact using garbage bags and shaking them at the dog. I haven't used gunshots with my puppy yet. I think we would fail this test. However we will be doing Canine Good Citizen test in 6 weeks. I will video it. Thanks for posting. I feel that temperament is vital. A gun that fires itself is deadly and unpredictable. My dogs must not be in charge.

Moderator Comment by Midhad on August 19, 2011 at 5:22pm

I am assuming that most of members on this forum are leaning more toward working type of boerboels instead of show dogs. I believe that the temperament is a very important factor in working type breeds. There has been a lot of talk about including the temperament test in the boerboel appraisals, but it seems to me that the organizations need to first agree on what is the correct boerboel temperament before they can design the test for it. I would love to see more talk about this topic. I believe if we are interested to preserve this  magnificent breed for what they are we have to pay attention to this. ATTS is one of the temperament tests and you can find more about them on their website atts.org. Please take a few minutes to tell me what do you think about the test, how do you think this dog did on the test and how do you think your boerboel would react on each of situations here. 

Thanks,

Midhad